At Some Point Before We Got To The Site Someone Left This Log. Propped It Up On A Stump With Some Rocks

At some point before we got to the site someone left this log. Propped it up on a stump with some rocks and it seemed like a good enough makeshift target to me. 🏹

First squash of the summer! A nice summer solstice gift from the squash box.

The Atlantic and I.

The reason I came back to Greenville this weekend is to see a play with my mom. It was one of our Christmas gifts to her. So in December, I knew this weekend was coming. I knew there would be a first weekend back. This time, at a hotel and not my old apartment, which was my very first apartment.

With the few hours of free time I had, I made my stops by my favorite places. The Swamp Rabbit trail, the Swamp Rabbit Cafe, my favorite restaurant to buy their special sauce by the carton so I can bring it back with me. Then I stopped by Trader Joe’s to see my old roommate while she was working. It’s a sunny day here - rare to come by. Of course it would greet me on one of the sunny days.

I cried hard when I was driving on 385 towards Unity Park, there’s a hill you drive over, and when you do, you see a beautiful backdrop of the blue ridge mountains in the distance, the rolling mountains as far as the eye can see. I use to drive on that road just to see that view- I cried when I saw it again.

I then rented one of the bikes at Unity Park so I could ride to Swamp Rabbit Cafe & Grocery to get some Stecca bread. Something I think about often even when I try not to think about Greenville. I sit at this bike themed place, I always hung out here when I was biking the trail. The trail was busy, the cafe, Unity park was booming with people, just like every sunny weekend day. We often stopped here on our way to swim in the mountains last summer.

I looked around me, that very granola/hipster/mountainy town vibe all around me. For most of my life leading up to my move here last year - so much of my personality was wrapped up in this aesthetic. I always thought about the “what ifs”- what if I could live in a city full of people my age, artsy people, not retirees moving to the beach? What if I could live somewhere with good jobs and I could easily afford rent? What if I could live near the mountains and live a more active lifestyle? It ate me alive for years, I would visit Greenville and Asheville often and play pretend at this granola aesthetic life, and I yearned for it.

And I did move here. I did get a job and an apartment I could afford. I did go hiking all the time. But I learned that that ultra specific aesthetic lifestyle only exists positively in a vacuum. That bubble popped quickly for me. The veil was lifted and I found out that this life of affording rent, working, but most importantly getting to be this artsy hiker so just bops around local grocery stores and rides her bike around with loaves of bread and fruit in her basket all the time. Was actually completely overshadowed by corporate greed, workplace abuse, loneliness, homesickness, and the yearning flipped around to missing home, missing my loved ones. Missing simplicity. I sunk into the lowest, most sorrowful and painful mental space I’ve ever had to endure.

Only a small piece of that “hipster granola” Swamp Rabbit Trail life was real. It was a tiny fraction. Everything else was chain retail, heavy traffic, corporate warehouse hell. Where do all these pretty hippie styled girls go? There are women surrounding me dressed in their granola earthy attire or like they just left REI. I would always sit here and crush on them, want to be them, or at least be a part of their group. Wearing bandanas, floral brush skirts, painting pictures in the grass. There were old men working in hiking boots lugging cartons of fresh strawberries. Everyone was riding bikes on the trail, I walked through the wildflower path.

In a way, I am connected to this. I was a regular in these parts. It was the only part of town I really loved besides Falls Park. I use to be the regular here, dressed in the REI attire - riding my bike or on my way to the mountains. For those brief moments of my life here, I felt like I belonged here. Anywhere or anytime else, I was getting chewed up and spit out.

I sat there at the cafe, eating the strawberry toast on the fresh Stecca bread. I wondered how are all these people so happy here? How are they surviving and enjoying life here? Not the randoms, but the people I grew up with that live here now. My friends, my old roommate who was my childhood best friend. How did they make it? Why couldn’t I? Why didn’t I belong here and why did I hate life so much? I know a lot of it had to do with my job. But how do these people enjoy life outside this little vacuum?

Outside of the vacuum, oh coastal living was eons better. Inside the vacuum, well… it’s tricky. I just have to start making the occasional long drive across the state back from time to time. I can exist in a vacuum here - I just can’t LIVE here.

For a brief moment I got to relive one of the few good memories I have of this town. I mean, look at it - it does look fun. It wasn’t worth staying tho. For some reason, I couldn’t make it work here, and I have a lot of anger about that. Now that the veil is lifted, I am protected from ever being tricked into moving to a city again.

The floodplain old growth forest, full of swamp guts and land often under water, hides truly ancient bald cypress trees. They are treasures the land works to preserve. The ecosystem within Congaree is hard to navigate and most of the time is not a friendly place to explore. You have to accept the creatures, bugs, mushy ground, and very long walks - but when you see the old growth- it’s always worth it. It reminds me that we are all here as a small part of this world among trees that were here 1,000 years before us. The old growth and the young cypress trees will be here long after each of us. To me, it is a humbling, calming reminder.

There is rarely a day out on the water in McClellanville that I do not see a few pods of dolphins. This pod was extra active today, which is always an exciting sight.