The Lowcountry of the Carolinas

De Wey Wi Speak, Duh De Wey Wi Lib”
(The way we speak is the way we live – Lowcountry Gullah)

Gorgeous Hunting Island. The dunes protect the sea turtle eggs.

We’re in deep Lowcountry and the center of the Gullah culture. It’s a region entrenched with history and racial tensions intermingled with stunning beach’s and virgin coastline. These are the Sea Islands of the Carolinas they’re a totally unique experience.

The broad, flat “Low Country” is a tide-influenced coastal area extending from ~70 miles inland through swampy inlets, marshes and rivers to hundreds of islands speckled along the coast of South Carolina. With its rich soils it’s one of the epicenters of North American plantation history, from large rice plantations in the early 1700′s to cotton in the 1800′s. During the boom-time thousands of African slaves were bought in to labor the fields, and  on the isolated coast they preserved their Gullah culture, a combination of Creole language and West African cultural heritage.

Lowcountry wilderness; inlets, marsh and forest

It took until 1960 to see the end of segregation in the region, and you still see a lot of the history in the region. The local population clearly remember the days of past, and many areas still show a stark separation between the poorer and richer communities. Much of the coastal wilderness stands apart and pristine and has kept a strong link to Gullah culture. It’s one of the last developed frontiers of the Atlantic with broad, stunning white beach’s set against a thick interior forest brimming with deer, racoon and wildlife.

The Gullah Grub Restaurant on St Helena Island serving old-fashioned shrimp and grits

We’ve spent the past week roaming the wild beach’s, exploring the coastal towns and talking to the locals. We’ve been amazed at the beauty of the area, as well as the warm Southern welcome we’ve been given by everyone we’ve met.

As the locals would say “you don’t come here to hide away, you come here to hear, feel and touch our story”, and it’s a story worth touching, indeed!

Geeks in the Forest = Pondering the Equations of Life

Happiness can be so simple

 The outside temperature has dropped to the 40′s (4°C), it’s drizzling a bone-chilling cold and we’re deep, deep into the TN forest. It’s moments like this that make you wonder what happens when 2 geeks in their expedition-weight Patagonia underwear spend several days holed-up in a large tin-can in the wilderness. Well, there’s many ways of keeping warm, of course…copious quantities of hot chocolate and mulled wine, woolen hats and good ‘ol-fashioned ehrmmm physical activity. But no matter how much we pretend to be normal the geekiness, after a certain number of hours, naturally comes forth. It’s the Natural Law of Techies-In-The-Wild and leads to a lot of interesting conversation about life, the universe and everything inside it. So, for today’s post I thought I’d share a few of our newly-arrived-at conclusions.

Where T = temperature (in celsius), and K is an environmental factor related to proximity of cold-running mountain streams and number of squirrels in the area. As you can imagine K, in general, gets larger the more “out there” and “up there” we go. So in a hot, city climate doggie energy (DE) goes to zero, whereas in a chilly remote mountain area, with a nice selection of small fast-twitch critters our dog will go “banana’s” with energy, mathematically speaking.

Where T = temp (in celsius)
Cat stickiness  (CS) is a technical term, of course, denoting how close to your body kitty “sticks” throughout the day. On the coldest days (lowest T), the cat is like super-glue and will elongate several miraculous cat-body-lengths over your body in order to attain the highest surface area of attachment. As you can see from the equation, at T>40°C (104°F), cat stickiness goes negative (i.e cat disappears) whereas at T=0 (freezing) cat stickiness is essentially infinite. Our experience has proved out both these facts.

Where D1 = distance to your neighbour, D2 = distance into the wilderness, CS = cat stickiness, DE = doggie energy and W1,W2 are weighting factors. So, basically the more we get out there, the happier we are, and the fact that CS and DE are in the equation just goes to show we like to have our fur babies around us. The weighting factors niftily allow you to adjust the equation to your own preferences.

This really says it all. Life is the sum of everything that happens to you, or rather, with a little mathematical generalization and a few simplification steps, life (and so by extension life happiness) is the sum of your experiences.

It’s amazing in retrospect to think that Einstein and Newton failed to derive these simple life laws, but it just goes to show what 2 geeks with a lot of time of their hands can come up with. So, go out there, get a sticky cat, take advantage of that crazy doggie energy and experience life to its fullest. After all, we’ve proved it makes you happy.

Q.E.D. (Quad Erat Demonstrandum)