Two worlds revealed

In the palm of my hand was the evidence of two worlds. I had scanned the ground carefully while walking the road in one direction, then I turned and walked back. The direction of the sunlight will sometimes make all the difference, and it did here.

My son, Clayton, and I had headed out early this past weekend to the Lowcountry. We wanted to take a look around, scout for some turkeys and maybe find an artifact or two. We had not been there since the fall on a deer drive.

Clubhouse Road was a little muddy from the rains and some recent traffic from a group of hog hunters. The river was up, out of the banks with a strong current, and the woodland slough behind the clubhouse was flooded with deep black water rushing between the trees.

At the intersection of Elbow and Jerry Road with Clubhouse Road, we stopped to look. We've found arrowheads, scrapers and pottery shards here, along these sandy roads. Clayton went in one direction and I in the other. I went down Elbow past the flowing well, then turned back. Clayton had turned down Clubhouse Road, so I crossed Clubhouse Road and went on down Jerry Road and into a little chufa food plot. Turkey tracks and scratchings covered the ground here.

On the way back to Clubhouse Road, something caught my eye in the plowed strip along the side of the road. It was a piece of Indian pottery. I had missed it when I was approaching from the other direction. The different angle of light made it visible now. I picked up the shard and wiped the dirt from the bottom side. There was a very interesting pattern on the piece.

At Clubhouse Road, a small white object in the hard-packed dirt caught my eye. It was a broken piece from a handpainted dish or bowl. Probably from the Colonial Period. I've picked up hundreds of these objects to look at them, then usually drop them back on the ground. But this one was colored different. I kept it.

The Indian pottery was probably from a time before European occupation of this continent. It might be thousands of years old. Modern roadbuilding and forestry practices had disturbed the earth and brought it near the surface. A hunt club plow had turned it up at last, to the sunlight. The civilization that created it is gone. There is no trace of the people except for the stone tools, arrowheads and pottery. We know almost nothing about them. They lived here, hunted, fished and farmed.

The Colonial pottery was from a more recent time. This land along the Edisto was settled after the American Revolution. The native Americans were gone. Soldiers were granted land for their service in the war. Robert Mills' 1825 map of the Colleton District shows two dwellings here along the Charleston Augusta Highway, labeled Stokes. What is now the Clubhouse Road led to a ferry that crossed the Edisto River. The land changed hands over the years and is owned by a timber company now.

I held these two objects in my hand and marveled at the difference in their worlds. We hunt and fish this land now. The deer and turkeys are still here, but the panther, wolf and bear are gone. Coyotes are here now, and hogs and armadillos. The forest is different now, but the dirt is still here. The same dirt that was here thousands of years ago.

Clayton and I moved on to different areas of the club. We saw a big flock of turkeys on Parler Road, and Clayton found a small, beautifully shaped arrowhead off Middle Road. We visited with Mister Thomas, who was cutting some firewood from a fallen tree near the Horseshoe. Too soon, it was time to head back to our own world.

Reach Dan Geddings at cdgeddings@gmail.com.