This week’s post isn’t about Michigan. It’s about Michiganders traveling. To a warm spot. In winter. My husband and Daughter Number 1 and I met up with Daughter Number 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina, where D#3 lives. The next morning, the four of us were packing the car before leaving for South Carolina, where D#3 and her husband have a second home. D#1, my husband, and I groused about being cold.
“I can’t believe it,” D#3 said. “You come here from Wyoming and Michigan and complain about the cold? What’s up with that?”
We said that what was up with that is that we weren’t appropriately dressed. Whereupon D#3 said, “That’s the thing about living in the South: you’re never appropriately dressed. Like now—I know it’ll get warmer later, so I don’t even notice it’s cold now.”
“Well, here’s the thing about people who live in cold places: we recognize cold when we experience it. This is cold.”
The weather warmed up—and the world greened up–as we traveled south. Daughter Number 2, who dropped us at Detroit Metro, reported whiteout snow conditions on the way home. In the Carolinas, spring has not only come, it’s pretty much over. At home, we’re thrilled with snowdrops. Here, magnolias and trumpet vines are over and done with. Roses are blooming in people’s gardens.
Also, there are palm trees everywhere. And live oaks. Some of the live oaks are the size of banyan trees. All of the live oaks are festooned with Spanish moss, as are other species of trees. From a sign in a nature preserve, we learned that Spanish moss is an air plant and not a parasite. Its relationship with trees is symbiotic.
I was quite curious about Spanish moss. What does it feel like? What does it smell like? I picked some up that had fallen to the ground. It doesn’t feel like moss. It feels springy and a bit like some non-smooth-coated dogs’ fur. It smells fresh and subtly green. Crushing it intensifies the smell.
We walked through lush forest in a nature preserve, and it was a forest unlike the ones at home. Live oaks do not look like the oak trees that grow in the Midwest. Their leaves aren’t even “oak-shaped.” There are pine trees here that have red-pine-like bark and white-pine-like needles–in bundles of three. Red pines have bundles of two needles. White pines, bundles of five. Loblolly pines, it turns out, have bundles of three. And isn’t that a wonderful name, loblolly? Live oaks, loblolly pines, and palm trees grow everywhere.
The nature preserve featured swamp- and marshland in abundance. The turtles we saw in the swamp were both familiar and unfamiliar. We have painted turtles in Michigan. But down here, they have yellow painted turtles, quite large and stately, that like to bask on logs, just like the turtles at home.
What we definitely don’t have at home is alligators. A flier in the nature preserve instructs that, in this part of the world, you should assume that every body of water contains an alligator. And from the protected confines of one of the extensive boardwalks through the swamp there, we saw an alligator swimming in a small body of water. There was a similar shape on the shore behind it. Alligators have been successful predators since the time of the dinosaurs. They look the part.
Another creepy critter plying the waters of coastal South Carolina is the anhinga, also known—appropriately–as the snake bird. A female anhinga liked to hunt for fish in the tannin-laden waters of our canal. She swam entirely submerged which meant, given the tannin, that she was invisible. Then she’d poke her long snaky neck up out of the water, swallow whatever she’d caught, and disappear again. On a cheerier note, there are brown pelicans sit, float, and plummet into the water for fish here. With buff tufts on their heads, they seem affable as they hang out together on the pier.
D#1, D#3, and I have just returned from star gazing on the beach. You can see so many stars from our island, even low in the sky. They’re loud, though, accompanied as they are by waves crashing onto the sand.
It’s been lovely being warm for a week. Soon it will be time to remember that it’s still winter at home. How fortunate we are to have been able to spend this time together here in a warm place. And—good news–we’ll be able to see the trees leaf out a second time this spring.
24 March 2023