Sapelo Island, Part I

     I have been here before,
          But when or how I cannot tell:
     I know the grass beyond the door,
          The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
~ Sudden Light, Dante Gabriel Rosetti

I don’t know what it is about the Georgia coast that lures me in.  I have no childhood attachment.  I’ve visited other beaches and coastlines in various locations with no connection.  But there is something about this place that is peaceful, comfortable, familiar… 

I’ve never been to Sapelo Island before.  Our visits typically include Savannah and some time on Tybee, the neighboring barrier island.  In the spirit of something different, we chose to visit Sapelo this year.  Sapelo is a small barrier island owned almost entirely by the state of Georgia and accessible only by ferry.  Commercially, the University of Georgia Marine Institute takes up much of the south end of the island.  We avoided most of that.  The only full-time residents live in Hog Hammock, a Gullah-Geechee community of about 50-70 people descended from West African and West Indian slaves brought to the island in the early 19th century.  This is where we stayed and spent most of our time.

The energy here is old.  You can feel it in the salty marsh air.  You feel it in the warm night wind as the nearly full moon shines through the ancient Spanish moss-covered oak trees.  It is the same energy that draws me back to the coast year after year.  But here, in the absence of modern distractions, it is strong. 

Pictures won’t do justice to this place but I will try!

So let’s start with our island nemesis, shall we?

This guy.  So Sapelo is home to several hundred wild cattle, remnants of the plantation era.  Apparently this large black bull used to lead the main herd but has since been replaced by a younger male.  Now he’s just kind of gone rogue and hangs out around the Hog Hammock community.  Apparently it is rare to see him and we saw him twice (more to come on that) so I guess we’re…lucky?

The first night we did a quick bike ride to the northern beach.  As a marine biologist at heart, I loved the fact that these deserted beaches retained the evidence of the local sea life.  I’ve never in my life seen so many horseshoe crabs-mostly dead, but still.  The bottom picture is a string of whelk eggs.  Whelks are basically like conchs, only smaller.

Sapelo is near Darien, GA which is huge shrimping community.  It was nothing to constantly see shrimp boats on the water.

What do you do when you have a rather boring picture of a shrimp boat?  You use it as an excuse to play around with Photoshop!  Here I’ve played with using some texture overlays to make it look more like an old photo/painting.  I dunno…still learning!

Today’s remaining pictures are of the marsh and beach our first day.  We went out in the evening and the colors were just amazing.  I’ve done minimal editing to try and convey an accurate picture but it can’t come close.  With the wind and the clouds as they passed over the sun, everything was in constant motion.  Amazing.

Much more to come soon!  There’s at least another post or two’s worth of Sapelo and then the Savannah picture sorting begins!  I’m also playing around with different formats so you may see changes here and there until I find something I really like.