Scenes from the weekend

I thought that I'd start off this Monday with some photos from our voyage along the Intracoastal Waterway to Capers Island.

We had a nice easy trip. It takes about 3 hours to get there and we arrived about an hour after dark on Friday evening.

As we were transiting there were some interesting sites along the way. We passed under the Ben Sawyer Bridge which is an old swing bridge. And just beyond that is a place of intrigue, Goat Island, which is a tiny island located on the ICW behind the resort island Isle of Palms. There is an interesting story about Goat Island (The following is excerpted from an article by Maria Zone).

In the early ’30s, a man and his wife lived there without electricity or water. The man, Henry, was a local who decided to free himself from the stresses of modern society. The couple were repelled by development occurring so they retreated to seclusion on their own deserted island – an island whose only inhabitants were a herd of goats.

Even though the Goat Man and his wife only lived 200 yards from the shore of the Isle of Palms, they shunned the developers and life on the far side of the waterway. They learned to naturally accept what God provided them with, drinking rainwater and eating the native vegetation. The island provided them with shelter from the rain, shade in the summer and firewood to knock off the chilly winds of winter.

They lived au naturelle, collecting discarded debris that drifted onto the shores and into their lives as the tide changed. They were true purveyors of the floatsam and jetsam of society.

The Goat Man and his wife eventually accepted visitations from those curious people who transited the waterway in their yachts. They were gracious to those who offered sandwiches and leftovers from a day of picnicking on nearby Dewees Island.

During the Goat man’s 32 years of self-imposed exile, civilized people in nearby communities knew that the Goat People were out there, across the waterway. But people denied the possibility that their simple lifestyle was a choice and the couple was sane.

The legend continued over the years. Children were told that the island was haunted because of the voices and sounds that were heard across the water. Some children dared to cross the short distance from the Isle of Palms to Goat Island to see for themselves. They discovered that the alien sounds were the soulful singing of a content, solitary man.

In 1961, after 30 years of living in the natural elements, the Goat Man accepted a small hut as a Christmas gift from generous neighbors who were concerned that the couple was too old to live an unsheltered life. But soon after they moved in and took shelter from the same elements of nature that had provided for them in the past, tragedy struck. The Goat Man caught pneumonia and died. His wife, Blanche, was left to carry on the legend and tradition alone.

Blanche lived on without her husband in solitude on Goat Island for almost a year. But tragedy again struck. She died from burns received in a fire caused by the wood burning stove that was also a handout from her civilized neighbors. Their paradise was left deserted to be overrun by looters who destroyed the organization of uncivilized life, in search of hidden wealth and buried treasure.

The only investment that the Goat Man and his wife ever really treasured was their partnership with nature and the life it yielded them. Their paradise didn't include material things, prestige or social acceptance. There was nothing there that looters could steal either before or after they died. Instead, their wealth was their ability to live a quiet life in full harmony with their surroundings.

I think that I would like to live like the Goat Man at times. And for a few days I did. Here are a few more photos from the trip.

Photos from top:

Ben Sawyer Bridge on ICW

Goat Island on Waterway

Maritime Forest on Capers

Large alligator sunning

Bone yard on Capers

Bone yard at sunset