cumberland island, part 2

It's been almost two weeks now since I left the island. I can still remember the feeling of waking up to misty sunrises and dew on the Spanish moss. Memories from the trip arrange themselves in my mind in moments, strung together by the long thread of Main Road, the solitary thoroughfare on Cumberland. All experiences are tethered to some amount of time on its sand-paved surface, where intrepid amateur archaeologists scour the dredged material for shark teeth and other treasures.

Main Road, Cumberland Island

A journey to the road's northernmost tip ensures you'll see nearly no one. We ventured out in search of Christmas Creek and found so much more. A trip down memory lane with natural historian and regal character Carol Ruckdeschel, a peek into the First African Baptist Church founded by the African-American community in 1893 and made nationally-famous by the wedding of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette in 1996, and a 6-mile beach walk where the sky was mirrored in the tide and we collected perfect shells and saw not a soul.

Alone with our reflections

And of course, I'll never forget where that road brought us home to each day- our shared driveway with the Greyfield Inn. A historic Carnegie family holding turned boutique inn, Greyfield has everything to offer history-lovers, garden-lovers, adventure-lovers, food-lovers, and well, lover-lovers.

You approach the Inn on a winding drive, never catching a complete glimpse of the structure for the elegant, sturdy arms of live oaks. Once you reach the grand entry stairs, you feel as though you'd be content forever on its wide, shaded porch, peeking in towards the library with its warm fire burning and local cheese and honey set out before dinner. This place is truly of your most romantic southern daydreams, with the electric crackle of a world-class establishment firing on all cylinders.

The grand entrance to Greyfield

As a landscape-lover, I joined a tour of the kitchen gardens, which are expertly run, innovative, and engaging. Produce from the gardens finds its way into the Inn's food and cocktails as well as on tables and doors as decoration. After the tour, I wandered through Gogo's studio and was awestruck by the originality with which Cumberland's delicate, fleeting flora and fauna (if one could refer to an armadillo as 'delicate) are transformed in silver and gold. Through her work, I was lucky enough to take a piece of Cumberland home with me in a way I never would have been able to otherwise.

So go- go to Cumberland Island. It will leave a mark on your heart forever.

cumberland island, part 1

I recently had the amazing opportunity to explore Georgia's magical Cumberland Island. I hesitate to use the word 'pristine' for landscapes; almost all come with layers of stories and often 'pristine' is only what meets the eye, the latest layer in a much longer, more complex history. That said, the sense of wildness, of nature parading its most glorious self around, heedless of your presence, is overwhelming here.

Sea Camp Beach Boardwalk

On our first day on the island, we wandered the well-marked National Park Service loop. About 5 miles in length, the trail covers the Ice House Musuem, which scratches the surface of human interaction with Cumberland's landscapes, the ruins of the famed Dungeness mansion (most recently in the hands of the Carnegie family, it burned down in 1959 and was transferred to the National Park Service in 1972), maritime forests of saw palmettos and live oaks (among others), salt marshes, and dunes.

One of the first things to adjust to on Cumberland is the wildlife. Wild horses (brought to the island in the 1500s to provide transportation to conquistadors) step casually through the saw palmettos and wander across live oak allees, deer stare at passers by between bites of meadow grass, and armadillos scuffle amongst the dead leaves for grub. As travelers, I think, we are used to towering trees and sea breezes ignoring our movements, we feel small and insignificant in their presence. But we expect to elicit certain responses from wildlife, we expect them to mind us, to paw the ground nervously, to turn and flee, to stare with at least mild curiosity. Here, all is changed. One can expect to inhabit the same position of general irrelevance in the feelings of the wildlife as with the trees. Life parades on, unhurried and full of sparkle and rot, only occasionally slowing down to acknowledge the visitor, and even then, one wonders if it was just a coincidence.

a deer pauses in front of Dungeness