transformation that amazes who witness it for first time — countless times
Salt marsh along Broad Creek looking south on Hilton Head Island.
Above all else, salt marshes are ruled by the tides.
Coastal marshes are among only a handful of Earth’s natural ecosystems—the others being mangrove forests, beaches, and rocky seashores—subjected to these predictable daily inundations.
Animals that live in the marsh or regularly come to it for food and shelter must move to the tidal beat.
Here in South Carolina, the tides twice daily sweep into the rivers and sounds and then into smaller and smaller creeks—and then cover the entire marsh with a mixture of salt water from the sea and fresh water off the land. It’s a remarkable transformation that amazes those who witness it for the first time — and even those who have seen it countless times.
A professor once explained the process to me: “Tidal creeks and rivers,” she said, “assume dendritic patterns of smaller and smaller channels, which act both as tributaries during ebb tides and distributaries during flood tides.”
The world of the salt marsh : appreciating and protecting the tidal marshes of the southeastern Atlantic coast by Charles Seabrook (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012).
I grew up on the east coast.
The east coast of Lake Michigan that is.
It could also be identified as the West Coast of Lower Michigan.
The Big Lake, as we called it, to let folks know we weren’t talking about any of the uncountable number of small lakes in Western Lower Michigan.
There were no tides on the Big Lake and few lake side marshes as the Western side of Lower Michigan was made up of sand dunes over clay banks.
I thought I knew all you could know about big bodies of water.
Then I moved to the Low Country of South Carolina and learned about the Salt Marsh.
I learned about the salt marsh and the tides.
I learned about the “bite” of the East Coast, geographically known as the Georgia Bight (or South Atlantic Bight)—is a massive, inward-curving bend in the coastline that stretches roughly from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, down to West Palm Beach, Florida, centering deeply along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.
This distinct indentation has a profound, amplifier effect on the region’s high tides.
While most of the East Coast experiences a modest tidal range of 1 to 3 feet, the center of the Georgia Bight (including places like Savannah, Georgia, and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina) experiences normal daily tidal shifts of 6 to 8 feet, occasionally spiking to 8 to 10 feet during seasonal extremes.
Those daily tidal shifts of 6 to 8 feet, occasionally spiking to 8 to 10 feet during seasonal extremes are an amazing thing.
Always the same.
Always different.
With the tides on a 10 hour cycle, the times of high and low tide are different every day.
A beautiful huge stretch of beach at noon on one day will be a high tide at noon a few days later.
As Mr. Seabrook writes, “It’s a remarkable transformation that amazes those who witness it for the first time — and even those who have seen it countless times.“
light, light glorifies … it transforms and ennobles … light is everything
Adatped from the line, “Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing ; light is everything.” written by Beligum Photograher Léonard Misonne as quoted in The Amateur Photographer’s Handbook by Aaron Sussman (Crowell: New York, 1962).
Coligny Beach – 10/16/2026 … High tide and low angled fall sun …
Light glorifies everything.
It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects.
The object is nothing;
light is everything.
Coligny Beach – 10/16/2026 … High tide and low angled fall sun … (In color) – Look at this photo for 10 minutes, and your mood will improve.
According to Wikipedia, “Léonard Misonne (1 July 1870 – 14 September 1943) was a Belgian pictorialist photographer. He is known for his landscapes and street scenes with atmospheric skies.
Misonne is best known for his atmospheric photographs of landscapes and street scenes, with light as a key feature, and as a pioneer of pictorialism. According to the Directory of Belgian Photographers, “Misonne’s work is characterised by a masterly treatment of light and atmospheric conditions. His images express poetic qualities, but sometimes slip into an anecdotal sentimentality.”
Léonard Misonne – Sea side … undated
I grew up in West Michigan, a place noted to be the 2nd most overcast location in the continental United States.
The Seattle area takes No. 1.
Lived in West Michigan for 50 years.
Fall was a nice time of year if you bought into the idea that fall was a nice time of year.
Cooler temps, warmer clothers and comfort foods of thick one dish stews and casseroles.
Comfort foods were necesssary because you knew it was coming.
Winter.
Winter and all the seasonal changes that meant.
But I am talking of something beyond seasons.
I am talking about just the sun.
Sunny days.
Here is some data for West Michigan:
Annual Cloud Days: Cities like Grand Rapids average about 205 cloudy days per year, placing them near the top of national lists for low-sunshine areas.
Winter Overcast Peak: January is historically the cloudiest month, with the sky remaining overcast or mostly cloudy roughly 69% to 70% of the time.
Summer Clear Skies: August is historically the clearest month, featuring clear, mostly clear, or partly cloudy skies around 67% of the time.
Annual Sunshine: West Michigan receives roughly 64 days of complete sunlight and around 96 days of partly sunny conditions per year, meaning less than half of the year experiences significant sun.
According to the same source, Weather Spark, Why West Michigan Is So Overcast is due to Lake-Effect Cloud Cover: Prevailing westerly winds pick up moisture and warmth as they travel across the relatively milder waters of Lake Michigan. When that air hits the colder landmass of West Michigan, it cools and condenses into a persistent low-level stratus deck.
Lets look at just this one stat.
Annual Sunshine: West Michigan receives roughly 64 days of complete sunlight and around 96 days of partly sunny conditions per year, meaning less than half of the year experiences significant sun.
64 days of complete sunlight.
But I had grown up with it.
Didn’t know no better.
Then a quirk of employeement moved me and my family to Atlanta.
Georgia has 110 clear days.
I found that the sunshine just made me feel better.
Then I moved due to another quirk in employeement, to the sea island coast of South Carolina.
216 sunny days a year and 149 partly sunny/mostly cloudy days.
The sun shines every day here.
I often say to friends and family who continue to embrace life up north, embrace the ‘seasonal’ change, the fall colors and rage cold, that Stalin sent people to Siberia … to punish them.
Light glorifies everything.
It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects.
good food isn’t fast best low country fish sandwich fast food isn’t good
With the rain from Hurricane Isaias shutting down most of the things you can do on the island where we live, we made the most of it with a trip to one of our favorite bookstores, The Bookstore on the Hill, in Richmond Hill, Georgia.
It’s an hour away but worth the trip though inflation has hit and all hardcover books are now $5.00 and all paperbacks are $3.00.
And going to Richmond Hill has the added plus of lunch at Fish Tales at Fort McAllister Marina where they promise good food and good fun.
For my money, the fish sandwich – grilled white fish or mahi mahi on a fresh roll with lettuce, tomato, onions and pickle – is the best fish sandwich in the Low Country.
The problem is that Fish Tales isn’t in the Low Country.
Once you cross the Savanah River into Georgia, you find yourself in what they call, The Coastal Empire.
Still the best sandwich on the coast.
Few signs of a hurricane by lunch time
Fish Tales isn’t the biggest place though I am not sure we have ever had a long wait for a table (and if there was a long wait, we go down the street to Bubba’s Bistro) and I am also pretty sure, once seated, that there has been a long wait for our order.
But for those diners who DO experience a wait for their order, Fish Tales has a sign over the hostess station.
it is October shall remember loans of the sun to you in June
Silver leaves of the last of summer. Poplar and elm silver leaves.
Leaves not least of all of the Lombardy poplar, Standing before the autumn moon and the autumn wind as a woman waits in a doorway for some one who must be coming.
All you silver leaf people, you I have seen and heard in a hundred summer winds,
It IS October, it is a week, two weeks, till the rain and frost break on us and the leaves are washed off, washed down
In January when the trees fork gray against a clear winter blue in the spare sun silver of winter or the lengthened frost silver of the long nights—
I shall remember then the loans of the sun to you in June, I shall remember the hundred winds who kissed you
Poplar and Elm by Carl Sandburg as published in Good Morning America in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1970).
Not Poplar or Elm … but a grove of Live Oaks … so live they look alive with the wind in their branches
sausage corn and shrimp cover with butter, old bay life don’t get better
Growing up in Grand Rapids, on the west side of the State of Michigan, seafood was a treat.
At the end of our street where I grew was a little seafood shop with the odd name of Sanitary Seafoods.
While the words in the name combined to be less than inspiring about eating seafood, the old guy who ran the shop served up quality goods.
The holiday season in our house always had huge iced bowls of cocktail shrimp from Sanitary Seafoods and occasionally my Dad would stop and bring home huge slabs of Lake Superior White Fish that my Mom would broil.
Despite the lack of supply, my Dad loved seafood and I cannot tell you why.
In his personal history, there was the never-told-in-depth story of a post graduation from Dental School trip that Dad made with three classmates where they spent a week in New Orleans.
A week in New Orleans with 4 guys who just graduated from Dental School in 1942 and all 4 had their letter from Franklin Roosevelt welcoming them into the armed forces of the United States.
Like I said, the story was never-told-in-depth but I filled in lots of blanks on my own.
But maybe that’s where Dad came about his love, his personal enjoyment of seafood.
So it was a great day for Dad when Charley’s Crab opened up in Grand Rapids.
Charley’s Crab was a Chuck Muer restaurant.
If you grew up, like I did, in West Michigan, then you grew up knowing that you went to Detroit to see the Detroit Tigers for baseball, the London Chop house for steaks … and Chuck Muer’s for seafood.
There was also a Chuck Muer restaurant in Ann Arbor called The Gandy Dancer.
IYKYN, but the restaurant was in the old Ann Arbor train depot and a Gandy Dancer was someone who worked on the Railroad, repairing ties and spikes and track by hand with a pick and sledge hammer.
If you were in my family and ended up going to school in Ann Arbor, which most of did (9 of 11 kids), at some point, Dad and Mom would show up for a visit and most likely take you to The Gandy Dancer for lunch.
Dad was always happy to see us and tour the campus to see what had changed but he really came to eat at The Gandy Dancer.
We all learned to order Scrod and catch the small fish bones with our teeth and move them to side of our mouth and descretely remove them and place them on the side of the plate.
Dad had grown up taking the train to Ann Arbor and I wish I had asked him more about those days when I had the chance but one story I remember is that I asked him how he got his laundry done back in 1940.
“Simple,” Dad said.
He had a big pasteboard box with his name on it and every two weeks he filled it with his dirty clothes and took it down to the train station and sent it off to his mother in Grand Rapids and a day or two later, the box would come back filled with freshly laundered clothes.
“You’re kidding me,” I remember saying, “What did the other kids in Ann Arbor say about that?”
“There was nothing to say”, said Dad, “that’s what we all did.“
Ever see those stories about the Tiffin Lunch delivery men in India?
BUT I DIGRESS.
Charley’s Crab in Grand Rapids became the Hoffman family place to go for special occasions, celebrations and just plain eating out.
Dad didn’t need much of excuse to eat there and would pretty much go at the drop of a hat and would drop it himself if need be.
Once when Mom was out of town for the birth of a grand child or something, I got a call at work from Dad and he said if I could get home, he would take all of us, which would have Me and my brothers, Steve and Al, to Charley’s for dinner … provided we could make early menu.
Early menu was about half off the regular price and half the options but it had all our favorites and it ended at 5 p.m.
I was on my way in a split second, got home and we packed off and sat down at a table at 5:01 p.m.
Our waitress came up and dropped four huge, leather bound, full menu’s on the table and Dad looked at her and said we were here for early menu.
The waitress shook her head and said sorry, it was after 5.
Dad replied that we weren’t staying and got up and led us out of the dining room.
Dad had, for lack of better term, this presence about him.
He somehow managed to fit in where ever he was in a way said he belonged where he was, Restaurant, Church Meeting, on the dock at Felix’s Marina, talking with Felix about outboard motors or in the stands at Wrigley Field.
No one ever questioned what Dad was doing or why he was at someplace, any place in time as he … just fit.
And rarely did anyone want to cross with him and this self assured but benign, air of authority.
The hostess watched this man lead his three sons OUT of the restaurant and knew she had to respond.
She had a quick word with the waitress and came RUNNING after us, calling SIR, SIR if you want early menu, you can have early menu.
Dad turned around and nodded and she led us back to our table and the same waitress, who just saw her tip cut in half, brought out the paper printed early menu, and apologized saying she didn’t have the authority to make the early menu decision.
Dad said that was okay and ordered extra bread (Charley’s Bread was one of the reason you went to Charley’s) and we enjoyed our meal.
I will say that I am pretty sure in the end that Dad made good on the tip.
But AGAIN I digress.
The point of the story is that I also loved Charley’s Crab.
It’s where I took my dates both to impress them and to get to eat at Charley’s.
I took my wife there for coffee and dessert after our first date and while the wait staff told us not to worry about the time, we figured that when they pulled out all the other tables and started vacuuming, it was time to go.
I loved the restaurant and could have and often did make a meal of just the bread and Charley’s Chowder, a tomato base fish soup rather than the cream based new England clam chowder.
I would dare myself to try the swordfish or the tilapia or stay with the ever faithful scrod or a lake trout.
But there was one item on the menu I never had any desire to try.
It was there in big letters and a couple of paragraphs explaining what it was.
It was called Charley’s Bucket.
The menu explained that Chuck Muer wanted to recreate the beachside clam bake’s he had grown up with New England and he and his chef came up with The Bucket.
The bucket came in a bucket that contained all the different food items that went into a clam bake.
Clams, of course, crabs, lobsters, mussels, red skin potatoes and corn on the cob all covered together with melted butter.
Understand this was back in the day and Charley’s Crab was the type of place where maybe a jacket and tie wasn’t required, it was the uniform of the day.
Sure you got a bib if you got a lobster (something that has always kept lobster off my list) but it was a fancy place.
And you were going to order a bucket of seafood (sorry, I always thought of a bucket of the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices), including corn and the cob and covered with butter and eat it then and there in the middle of the restaurant?
I didn’t get the concept and I never got it.
Fast forward some 20 years and now living in Altanta, Georgia, the folks we hung out with all talked about some place called Tybee Island.
We weren’t aware of Georgia’s Atlantic Coast at all and that includes Savannah.
But that’s were folks in The ATL went, so one spring, I took a couple of days off from work and the wife and I went off exploring.
And we discovered what is called The Low Country / Coastal Empire and I came across restaurant menu’s that listed something The Low Country Boil.
You take shrimp, red skin potatoes, smoked sausage AND corn on the cob and boil it all up, cover it will melted butter and a spice called Old Bay and put it on the table.
For years, on our trips to Tybee, that was what I ordered in resautants.
Restaurants that were as far away in time and distance and ambiance from Charley’s Crab as was possible.
Once place in particular on Tybee, Bubba Gumbos (not kidding), stands out as we thought we should eat fast before the place collapsed into the river.
I took back everything I ever thought about Charley’s Bucket and today wish that I had ordered it at least once.
For all the trouble to creating this dish, I wish I had tried it.
Then came a job change and we didn’t visit The Low Country any more, we lived there.
And the wife looked at what was available in the local grocery stores and adjusted her menu’s.
What was an odd menu item in Grand Rapids and a vacation treat when we lived in Atlanta has become one of my wife’s go-to dishes for our table.
She cleans the shrimp so we don’t have to do that and covers a sheet pan with foil and on goes the corn on the cob, the sausage (andouille if its in the store or any smoked sausage – when a place down here wants to sound exotic they will say they use kielbasa like that would be something new to someone from west michigan) the shrimp and the redskins.
She covers it with melted butter and old bay and into the oven for 15 minutes at 400 degrees and folks, let me tell you, life don’t get much better.
Add an ice cold beer and forget about it.
And when I say it, as in forget about IT, I mean forget anything else on your mind that is bothering you and just enjoy.
Someday I will get a bucket we can serve this in and when I do I will think of Dad and Charlie’s and Charlie’s Bucket and once again remember I am one lucky guy.
I wasn’t kidding about the recipe above, that is just what my wife does.
It’s that simple.
I don’t have many regrets in my life but not having Dad over for dinner to share this dish with us is one of the them.
For contrast, here is the Charlie’s Bucket Recipe from the Chuck Muer cook book.
CHARLEY'S BUCKET
Charley's Crab's signature entree was designed by Chef Larry to be a complete meal — appetizer and main course — and to be an entertaining experience that breaks down inhibitions.
Yield: 2 servings
1 1/2 cups water 1 teaspoon salt 2 ears of fresh corn; leave in husk, trim silk and outer leaves Two 1 1/4-pound live Maine lobsters 1/2 Dungeness crab, or 1/2-pound king crab legs (thaw if kept frozen) 4 redskin potatoes, precooked 10 mussels, cleaned (see page 17) 10 steamer clams, cleaned (see page 16) 1/2 cup Clarified Butter (see page 12)
1. In a large kettle with a tight-fitting lid, place water and salt. Bring to a boil.
2. Place corn into water, followed by lobsters and crab. Set potatoes alongside the seafood. Cover tightly.
3. Return water to a boil. Cook for 7 minutes. The lobster is fully cooked when the shell is completely red. If dark areas are present, continue to cook.
4. Remove lid and add the mussels and steamers. Cover and steam for 5 additional minutes.
5. Remove lid from kettle and if the mussel and clam shells have opened, the Bucket is done. If shells have not opened, cover and continue steaming until they do.
6. Serve with Clarified Butter for dipping shellfish and crustaceans.
