Blue Goose ~ Day 245

January 27, 2015 ~ Kingsland, GA to Hardeeville, SC

When I crossed from Florida into Georgia, I immediately started sharing the narrow two-lane roads with speeding logging trucks, loaded with small diameter pines, only partially trimmed, so that tree detritus kept flying off. I hate driving behind car carriers and logging trucks...

Today I went to Harris Neck NWR, the most moss-draped refuge so far.

Harris Island NWR - GA

It's a quiet time of year here between migration and nesting seasons. There were few birds along the road through the refuge or at the boat landing and none at the VC feeders. Harris Neck is a small refuge situated on a peninsula in Georgia's Low Country, a place where rivers originating in the north meander down to the sea. Historically blacks settled here and built processing plants for crabs and oysters before the US military decided to build an air base in 1942:

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

The land was expropriated and families were given two weeks to remove themselves. At the time of transfer, black families (who owned 1,102 acres) were given $26.90 per acre and the white families (who owned 1,532 acres) were given $37.31 per acre...Former residents of the displaced community and their descendants are attempting to work out a compromise with the federal government to allow them to return to their land, without significantly disrupting the wildlife refuge.

While Harris Neck is modest in acreage (less than 3000), it has a variety of habitat with swamps and marshes, salt- and fresh-water creeks, estuaries, open fields and hardwood forests. It hosts a Wood Stork rookery and Painted Buntings nest here in the summer.

Harris Neck NWR - GA
(I have no idea what this was; there was no information.)

Other Savannah Coastal Complex refuges such as Blackbeard Island, Wassaw and Wolf Island are either accessible only by boat or are closed to the public.

This is also Gullah Geechee country and a couple of the refuges had large posters acknowledging this heritage. See www.gullahgeecheecorridor.org for more information. The contrast between places like Hilton Head Island and the Gullah sea island communities could hardly be further apart.

I am constantly reminded by all that went before as I drive about and how many resources are available to the public for learning the history, the simplest and easiest of which are the Historical Markers all over the US.

The Low Country a place of rice plantations, rivers running to the sea, fishing, Civil War venues, lovely homes with generous porches, abandoned falling-down ghosty-grey houses, gated communities and hundreds of small white churches...mostly Baptist, but some Lutheran and Methodist, all with tall narrow steeples.

Sadly, there is also an incredible abundance of litter...really, a truly disgraceful amount.

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