I wondered if it was just a coincidence that the weather continued to be spectacular, carrying on what I had experienced the previous weekend in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sunday was the annual special tour of Bull Island led by Rudy Mancke, and I was along helping as a board member of the Sewee Association. Beyond the weather, my prediction of a very low mosquito count came true. It was a truly special day, only later brought to my awareness as 10/10/10.
The ride over to the island on Island Cat, with Coastal Expeditions staff Will Christenson serving as captain and Weatherly Meadors as naturalist, was wonderfully comfortable.
We headed for the island before 9, and a second group came over later in the morning. Both tours were full, and Rudy led each group of about 40 around the island, transported in vehicles with trailers rigged out with benches. At regular intervals the vehicles would stop and Rudy would interpret special features on the island, as well as what was happening in each location in the moment. The first group organized to leave from the Dominick House, but Rudy started the tour right there with the viewing of a black racer up in an old cedar tree, and soon he had it in hand, snake-charming the whole group (except for the ophidiophobic) with his encyclopedic knowledge of snakes and this particular species.
Rudy had us from that moment on, and he could have done the whole tour in the front yard of the Dominick House.
Rudy Mancke on his tours in the field attracts both people and animals to him. With a fantastically trained eye, and an ever-present butterfly net, he discoursed on various dragonflies and butterflies when caught and held skillfully in his hand. As I have experienced in the past, it becomes clear to those flocking around him of being in the presence of an extraordinary master naturalist and educator. In his hand we experienced the beauty and wonder of a green darner dragonfly, a cattail, a gulf fritillary, and several cocoons. (Photos below of green darner dragonfly courtesy of Elizabeth Vernon Bell).
Rudy moved beyond mere species identification in fleshing out aspects of life histories in an entertaining manner. The attendees worked to capture the closeups and knowledge with digital cameras and notes.
The first stop near the southern dike of the upper Summerhouse Pond allowed Rudy to talk about the maritime forest of the island. He reflected on the impact of Hurricane Hugo on this forest. With his former and long-running ETV show, Naturescene, Rudy had done a show in May of 1989 on the island, unaware of what would happen when the fury of the storm passed directly over Bull Island. He returned the following May to do a follow-up show, with shots taken in the same places. (To watch segments of these shows featuring Bull Island, go to the following ETV link).
Rudy’s scope ranges from the micro to the macro, making connections in the web of life always stimulating the listener’s consciousness. On this day I drifted in and out of the learning circle, restless at times to check out an ecotone or vista, as did fellow naturalist Robert Hopkins. While at the Boneyard, the extraordinary place where the maritime forest meets the ocean, I drifted back for Rudy’s talk on barrier island dynamics. He recalled a Wofford geology professor, John Harrington, and a phrase summing up a concept that stuck with him forever, and now has been imprinted in my brain like the sand spurs on my shoes – “The was-ness of the is.” Seeing those trees sticking up out of the ocean required the imagination to understand what had happened there. Digging deeper in the was-ness, Rudy looked down to reflect on the glints of quartz in the sand, and their provenance in the upstate, transported by major river systems in the Carolinas. It was easy to soar with the dragonflies with these revelations in the moment and in geological time for this observer, who one week earlier had glided down from the Appalachians to the Lowcountry coast.
I took the opportunity at lunch and on the ferry ride back to the mainland to ask participants about the highlights of the day. No one really leaped to one moment or another. The green darner dragonfly was beautiful, the Boneyard was a treat: these experiences were amongst the highlights identified.
More often, attendees talked about the sum total of the day.
On our return, Weatherly (with the help of the youngest attendees on board – 4 & 6yr old sisters) took the helm from Captain Will while he moved to the specimen table to talk about the objects – skulls of alligator and loggerhead, shells of whelks, bivalves, horseshoe crabs, and others. A shout came from the bow “Otter!”, and Will excitedly charged forward to see, along with all the passengers looking forward and to port. The tiny head came up again, and as the thin little mammal slithered into the cordgrass at the creek’s bank the consensus was that we had just seen a mink, a cousin to the otter in the weasel family.
Will had asked me earlier if I had ever seen an otter in the refuge, and my only sighting was one crossing the road going into the impoundment in my community. I mentioned the mink depredations of some loggerhead nests this season, and Rhonda Ewing reminded me of the need for nature’s balance. Minks are native to the SC coast, but had been in serious decline until SC DNR began a program to restock them north of Charleston. (Check out this article about the DNR mink program). There will be further tipping of the scale in the predator – prey relationships between minks, loggerheads, and a multiple of other species.
There was an attendee that introduced herself to me earlier in the day – Jenny, a nurse from the Institute of Psychiatry where I also work. Without my name coming up we may have never made the connection: our paths have not crossed much within our respective job spheres. Additionally, she has been out on medical leave. She was on the trip with her brother and mother, and having this trip together was a special one for this family. Asking Jenny about her highlight, she shared that with chemotherapy, and the strong probability of not returning to work, she has become more appreciative of each day. To have this experience with her family, blessed with weather almost beyond belief, and our really meeting each other on this day, was in her mind an incredible gift, and certainly more than a coincidence. As my friend Ed Kesgen says, coincidence is when Spirit choose to remain anonymous.
