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Last of
the wild
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Explore the untamed islands of Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge TEXT AND PHOTOS BY TIM HANSON
It is dark out here on Boneyard Beach, maybe an hour before sunrise on this mild October morning on Bulls Island. But the sky is clear, and someone in our group points out Orion’s Belt, the three stars which for centuries have been a tool for celestial navigation and a visual anchor for amateur astronomers. “You are going to witness the greatest show on earth,” boat captain Chris Crolley told his 33 passengers as he piloted the ferry Caretta through the darkness from the South Carolina mainland to this largest and most popular of the four main islands in Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. Onshore, the visitors spread out and pick their way along the beach by flashlight, stepping around some of the hundreds of sun-bleached, skeleton-like remains of cedar and oak and pine that stretch for three miles along the northeast end of the island. At one time, this whole area was a dense forest, but over the decades, powerful storms and rising sea levels have eaten away at the edges of the island and ravaged its population of trees. Every now and then, one of us stoops to pluck a seashell or a sand dollar or some other curiosity of nature from the beach as the pre-dawn surf rolls onto the shore. Meanwhile, out there in the dark, 1,000 American alligators hunker down in the island’s swamps. Other creatures, too—black fox, bobcats, deer, cottonmouths, nearly 300 species of birds— have found sanctuary here, and when visitors to Bulls Island 22
SOUTH CAROLINA LIVING | JANUARY 2019 | SCLIVING.COOP
spy one of them, it is a special, thrilling moment indeed. Several years ago, on my first visit to Bulls Island, I was alone walking a trail between Mills and Summerhouse roads when I spotted a large alligator (I can state with complete confidence that he was no shorter than 10 feet in length) sunning himself on the banks of Upper Summerhouse Pond. I had seen these animals on numerous occasions at places