Blog

It’s Kerry’s Birthday Month — Help Her Get Kids Outside! Our Jocassee Wild Child director, Kerry McKenzie, turns another year older on August 5th. For her birthday, she wants to raise $5,000 to help more kids from underserved communities experience the magic of the Jocassee Gorges through Jocassee Wild Child. With your support, we can…

  We were all stopped in our tracks by an enormous dragonfly maneuvering like a Blackhawk over the banks of Toxaway Creek. Forward, hover and pivot. Backwards, hover and pivot. Four individually muscled wings steering it in any direction it needs to go. The flight system engineered by nature is so efficient for its purpose,…

August Clouds Like magnificent shape-shifting beasts of mythical proportions, the clouds of August split the sky with sharp bolts of lightning and create the deep, resonating music of thunder rolling through the hills. These clouds, they bend us to their will, cancel our golf games, halt our work, ruin our dress shoes. They inspire great…

As a blistering heat dome settles over the southeast this weekend, we are in for a string of some of the hottest days of the year thus far. It’s a good time to seek out a cool, shady spot and take it easy if you can. The deep mountain valleys that lie beneath Lake Jocassee…

Summer The jet stream is not moving; high pressure is holding the hottest air of this summer over South Carolina like a lid on a boiling pot of water. Outside, one of the gray squirrels is spread-eagle on the porch railing, panting in the shade. Birds hide from sun in front yard trees. Weed leaves…

The Mysteries of Jocassee You just never know…   There’s a special kind of joy that fills me every time I make the drive to Devil’s Fork State Park. Each day, each season, offers a new perspective of the clear blue water and the mountains tumbling around it. Who will I meet today? What brings…

Overlooking beauty   One car after another stops at Wigington Overlook and releases passengers into the hot summer sun. One group of visitors pauses just long enough to chat with the next arrivals, often asking the name of the beautiful lake sparkling in the distance. Blue lake nestled into blue mountains is certainly riveting, but…

On each trip to Lake Jocassee, I enjoy seeing the things that have sparked my curiosity on previous adventures. The last several trips out on the lake, we have visited with a tiny pale blue butterfly. Recently one joined us, flitting from person to person. I decided to find out more about this tiny creature….

Letter to Bee   Dear Bee, Your volunteer time pollinating Earth flowers has been recorded, and your mid-term observations on Homo sapiens did arrive on time. Thank you for that. The study of humans is a complex project, Bee. Remember, wood-eating bees like you have been learning to live with other beings for 100 million…

It is our privilege as JLT guides to relive the wonder and awe of our own first nature experiences when a young client holds a salamander, swims under a waterfall, or tastes the “root beery” flavor of a sassafras leaf for the first time. Children are the heart of our Wild Child program and sharing…

False Alarm Maybe it takes all kinds, but it takes a special kind of evil to make a prank call about a boating accident on a busy 4th of July weekend. The words that came through the grapevine were “bad boating accident at the Jocassee Dam, twelve people onboard.” Hearts raced. Rumors swirled like toilet…

Meet the Sharkeys—our favorite lounge of sloths for the day! Somewhere in Jocassee’s lush, temperate rainforest, they found the ultimate hanging log and slipped right into full sloth mode—dangling, laughing, and loving every minute of it. And what about that dad? The honorary king of the lounge. Once a Wild Child, always a Wild Child….