Blog

  ‍As we head into this beautiful winter season, one thing you can count on seeing on Jocassee this time of year are our winter birds. On Wednesday, Zach saw 6 eagles, Matt caught a glimpse of a bufflehead hanging out in a group of horned grebes and my boat was lucky enough, in addition…

Christmas Green leaves of partridge (in a pear tree) berry vining through silver (bells) tufts of (Rudolf the red-nosed) reindeer moss. (Merry) Christmas fern. Bright red holly (jolly Christmas) berries on evergreen trees. These gifts, precious as any delivered by magi who follow that familiar star on a long-ago night, are our familiars. Even in…

Stranger things. We were on the lake looking for loons, and eagles, and Bonaparte’s gulls, for two days! It just doesn’t get any better than a couple of days on Jocassee with Master Naturalists. Turning the corner into Laurel Fork Creek, necks stretched to see some loons, someone yelled “otters!” There were two on the…

Winter When there’s ice on the birdbath and rhododendron leaves are rolled tight as cigars, the summer of 2025 is really over. We grab hats and gloves to leave the house. Mica insists on walking us every day, and neither heat nor rain nor freezing air will change her determination. A short drive takes us…

The false spring of early November has finally eased into more typical fall like weather but not before confusing some of the small leaf rhododendron into blooming out of season. Birds are arriving daily. Large rafts of Bonaparte’s and ring-billed gulls are floating on both the surface and the breeze. We’re watching grebes practice their…

Wet The air this first week of December is an ocean of suspended wet. Not rain, just… wet. We swipe at boat seats one last time with a not-quite-dry towel and cover them with an almost dry blanket, admonishing “Sit! Quick! Before the seat gets wet again!” Swaddled in blankets, we cruise out into the…

DELIRIUM. That’s the state our dog Mica nearly enters whenever we take her to the coast, as we do most every Thanksgiving. I mean, where else to properly celebrate the abundance of the North American continent than the coast of South Carolina. The vast depth of the salt marshes, the endless Atlantic, the miles upon…

Just Imagine!   These wild children… are they entering the not-so-far-away land of imagination? Is this young lady imagining herself as a microscopic being, freshly immerged from a watery home, hidden and quenched in a bed of moss? Is this child writing the story where he is once again a Cherokee youth, slipping quietly in…

‍And so… the quiet time begins. Leaves are falling along with the water temps, exposing rock houses, slopes & portions of waterfalls that are usually hidden from view. Wildlife surely must breathe a sigh of relief as peace echoes down the escarpment and across the water. A slower pace doesn’t mean we’re not busy. We…

Gratitude, continued   There are days when this place called Jocassee is a living devotional. When the water is clear and calm, when light is radiant, when cloud shadows tiptoe across mountaintops, when the glorious elegance of an unexpected moment in time makes the heart beat a little faster—this is what brings us, again and…

THE BONEY’S ARE HERE! THE BONEY’S ARE HERE! The smallest and most agile of the gulls we are privileged to see in our part of the world, the arrival of Bonaparte’s gulls in early November every year announces the beginning of fall migration of the waterbirds that call Jocassee home for the winter. As predictable…

Gratitude What a week it’s been along the base of the Blue Wall. Showers of leaves floating down like fat snowflakes on Monday. An unexpected snow cloud showering over Jocassee on an otherwise clear, bone-chilling Tuesday afternoon. A view of mesmerizing colors from aurora borealis dancing into South Carolina mountains on Tuesday and Wednesday nights….