Carolina Bays: Wild, Mysterious, and Majestic Landforms by Robert C. Clark & Tom Poland

Author:Robert C. Clark & Tom Poland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 2019-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Imminent Takeoff

SUMTER COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA

At Dalzell Bay two biplane-like dragonflies take a break from aerial acrobatics. As dragonflies dart about seizing prey, the buzzing clatter of wings fills the air spring and summer.

It’s a reunion. Steve, Robert, and I are in the field together for the first time since 1987, and we’re meeting the Saginaw Impact Manifold origins theorist Michael Davias at 7:30 A.M. at Cannery Road near the bay. Davias has driven all night from Stamford, Connecticut. We’re eager to discuss the bays, their wealth of habitat, uniqueness, and origin theories. It won’t take long, however, for this bay to remind us that bays can be inhospitable places.

After meeting at Cannery Road, we enter woods full of tangles and logs and make our way west to the bay’s pond cypress swamp, for now out of sight. The woods are thick, and we use a compass and satellite imagery to make our way to the bay’s mirrorlike black water. Here and there remnants of garbage piles mar the view—rusted-out cans and spent baby food jars. Shotgun shells litter the ground, and we come across a tree stand. Besides the litter, nearby Shaw Air Force Base sends jets up every few minutes. “I feel like I’m at LaGuardia,” says Davias. The roar is deafening. Gnats fill the air, another nuisance. Dragonflies don’t have to worry about food here.

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