Winter/Spring 2016

Islanders such as myself do not want to protect the wetlands just because they are a gorgeous natural resource of our Barrier Island home, but because they are our one hope to keep our homes. Marshes are natural sponges. Unless there has been a severe drought, if you were to walk into a marsh you would immediately sink up to your ankles or worse (I have gone thigh-high once while trying to pull a kayak ashore). Marshland protects low-lying areas from severe flooding during rainstorms and hurricanes.

*

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

*

Continue scampering in the direction that feels instinctive. If the terrain has changed or there are things in your way, keep going. Walk over, through, and around anything that you need to. Look for cracks under doors that you can crawl under. Remember to keep your big claw always up and ready, poised for attack. You don’t know what could be behind these doors and you’ll move slower on carpet. Watch out for anything that may try to catch you. If you do find yourself scooped up in something with no bottom: fight. Run around, kick, claw, pinch, and make as much raucous as possible until the offender puts you down. If you are lucky you may find yourself among grass, dirt, and pebbles once more. If you are unlucky you may find yourself among colorful rocks, plastic trees, and a round Tupperware of salt-sprinkled water.

*

Meteorologists say that hurricanes have a pattern. They will be light and barely make landfall for a few years and then all of a sudden it will be one category four or five after another making landfall in the same places as a century before. Rumor has it that the coast of Georgia was hit hard in the late 1800s and our time is coming up once again.

Due to this apparent predestination, every summer since my sixth grade year islanders have experienced an all-too-familiar pattern: a hurricane forms in the Atlantic, rapidly gains strength, and heads towards the East Coast of the United States. News Channels display red ticker tapes with constant status updates of Hurricane Whoever. Locals use the hurricane’s first name as if it were an old friend. “How’s Ike doin’?”, “Do you think Charlie’s gonna get here?”, “Maybe they’ll cancel school for Fay.” Local businesses and newcomers board up their windows with sheets of wood and place all uninsured items at least two feet off the floor. Those who haven’t learned any better place giant X’s of Duct tape on their windows so that the glass will not shatter when it breaks (those of us who have learned know it’s better to just let the damn things shatter rather than spend months scraping the tape off your windows). And then, when even the most apathetic of islanders have decided to finally pack a few things because evacuation seems imminent, Hurricane Whoever catches the Gulf Stream right off of Georgia’s coast and rides it straight into the Carolinas. What amazes me the most is that every year without fail, North and South Carolina are surprised and unprepared.

Instead it is us, the islanders, who prepare for a possible catastrophe because we know it will come and we know our island will no longer save us. With each square foot of marshland that disappears another half inch of water can be added to the flood that will eventually consume St. Simons Island. My eighth grade science teacher once showed our class a chart that illustrated what sections of St. Simons would be destroyed by the floodwaters of each hurricane category. My section of the island (the middle) was shaded gray-blue for a category three. The only thing keeping us from a category two was the marsh – the marsh that a family recently filled in to build an extravagant cookie-cutter home.

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If you have found yourself outside once more: good for you! Continue trailing eastward. You may see a few more like you now. Remember to always remain observant for cars, people, and raccoons. Do not let your guard down when you reach the woods. It’s getting dark now and your shell will begin to lighten. Camouflage will be harder. Tear quickly across strips of asphalt and the driveways of large homes that look alike. Keep going until you reach soft ground again. You will know you’re there when even your tiny legs leave tracks of pinpricks in the mud. Wait until you are once more surrounded by lofty blades of stiff grass. Watch for signs from the others. When they stop, you stop. Begin digging. Scoop as much and as hard as you can into the mud. It should give way easily. Once you have finished and your second home is complete, fold your torso into your legs so that you can easily slide down your front tunnel. Now you are safe. Now you can rest.

*

But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.

*

When I think of my island I think of it as it once was: an island covered with long stretches of cream-colored beaches, thick maritime forests, and luscious chartreuse marshes. I see the horseshoe crabs that used to line the shore in herds, living fossils that lumbered into the brackish ocean as the waves washed over their armored shells. I see the massive live oak trees that blanketed St. Simons, their limbs spread like a loving embrace and laden with coarse Spanish moss. I see a golden marshland glowing in the sun, its water rife with life, and its mud ready to absorb the rising tide.

When I look at St. Simons, however, I see an environment that has given up the will to survive. The beach is swiftly eroding into the Atlantic Ocean, the forests have largely been flattened for condominiums and shopping squares, and the marshes are being filled in to make room for more homes. Sand dollars and whelks are scarce, and those that appear on our shores are long dead. The commissioners and wealthy people in charge of zoning do not care about the wetlands they are destroying and the once thriving environment they are suffocating. They don’t care that the alligators have nowhere to go except golf course ponds, or that the fiddler crabs must migrate through the Outback Steakhouse. They don’t care that all they are striving to build will one day be violently washed away, destroyed by the hurricane that will come and left unprotected by the environment that was taken away.