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  ‍September is for spiders. On less humid days, the boat floats through gossamer strands carrying spiders to their next destination. Spiny back and marbled orb weavers’ carefully woven dinner plates cross the trails. Joro spiders’ three-dimensional golden webs are everywhere, high and low. I can’t help but admire their determination to live. Recently, while…

  Date Night In September, every night is date night. Brooks and I golfcart to the lake, eschewing television drama for gentle rhythms of lake life. Then we walk. Narrow lines of wrack outline recent drops of water level. We walk through a short stretch of woods where whitewash from a vultures’ roost has left…

‍AUGUST And just like that, it’s gone. The towering, impenetrable clouds, indescribably white. Until the storms come in the afternoon. Then almost suddenly the clouds and the sky turn grey. Angry grey. Intimidating grey. Humbling grey. There is a stiff burst of wind when these summer storms turn our way, and oh how the buzzards…

V.I.P. Day 2026   When sun has blistered for weeks on end, this overcast sky is a gift from gracious gods. Guides from Jocassee Lake Tours give silent, heartfelt thanks as we motor across a calm lake with V.I.P. Day volunteers, each boat intent on cleaning up a favorite area of Lake Jocassee. Our boat…

How often do you intentionally stop for a few minutes and lose yourself in the quiet? This week, as we sat in the shade, having lunch beside a no-named trickle slipping off the mountainside into the lake, that’s exactly what I asked a group of 4th grade JWC students to do.  To my surprise, they sat…

Wild Life   A juvenile bald eagle (first year?) swoops low beside our boat and tries to catch a fish along the shore. A little sanderling (bird) far from its migration route hops back and forth along the boat dock, picking at invisible morsels, quite undisturbed by boatloads of fourth graders tromping past. A mama…

The Future is WILD! Wonder. Inspire. Learn. Discover.   Wild Child season is officially underway! This week, Clemson Elementary helped us kick off a fall season that will bring nearly 2,000 local children into the Jocassee Gorges. For these children, Jocassee isn’t simply a beautiful place to visit. It’s a place to wonder, explore, get…

Day’s End Tip-top leaves of a chestnut oak down the hill are all a-flutter, waving like jazz hands in calm evening air. Nuthatches have returned to the bird feeders. Devils walking sticks, whose magenta panicles bent low last week under heavy loads of fruit, slowly rise back into their straight-limbed prickled glory as the blue-black…

Phenology is phenomenal!   Phenology is a funny thing. It’s that special sense in nature that while things are changing, some things remain constant as well. Some people call it “Nature’s calendar,” a kind of botanical clock when rooting and blooming and seeding occur in perceptible patterns that vary according to weather, seasons, and climate….

Hickory Rain The sky is cool blue. Sun, searing hot. Big fat drops of rain are falling through leaves of a nearby tree. Pitter, patter, plop, plop, plop. Thump. Thump? Wait a minute. What sounds like rain is not, it’s bits of hickory husk that are raining down, with the occasional green nut thumping against…

A group of children stood transfixed on one side of Wright Creek. I followed their gaze and saw a bobcat kitten across the water, perched on a log no more than 10 feet away. The kitten held its steady gaze, silently assessing them. Were these smaller humans a threat? The children held their position. Was…

August Clouds They rise, puffy clouds piling on top of puffy clouds, rising into sky so blue and hot it hurts. A meeting room full of clouds expands into an auditorium, then a stadium. Do they bump into each other randomly and become one, these clouds, or is there some mysterious attraction of wet to…