100 things to learn about the South Carolina Lowcountry before you die | Opinion
Lynn and Cele Seldon of Beaufort have traveled the world to write about its most fascinating places, foods, sights and sounds.
Despite all those choices, there’s only one place they call home: South Carolina’s Lowcountry. Our Lowcountry. The part that’s not Charleston. Some of it’s flashy. Some of it’s historic. And some of it’s found far down lonely roads where GPS gets confused and “Jesus Saves” signs get tacked to trees.
Now they have written about home in a new book, “100 Things To Do in the South Carolina Lowcountry Before You Die.” The married couple do so while acknowledging the inner conflict between the joy of sharing a special place and the worry of clogging it up with more visitors.
They have spent three decades touring and writing. Beyond travel-oriented books and articles, Lynn Seldon has written two novels. “Virginia’s Ring” revolves around his alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute.
They write about local restaurants for Beaufort’s “Lowcountry Weekly” paper, and they have done previous “100 Things To Do …” books on the cities of Charleston and Savannah, Georgia.
The new book follows a tight formula for St. Louise-based Reedy Press with sections on food and drink, music and entertainment, sports and recreation, culture and history, and shopping and fashion. It includes activities by season, suggested itineraries, an index and a number of insider tips. And it cheats, in a way, with many of its 100 entries including lists of other similar things to do in the vicinity.
The Seldons were introduced to the Lowcountry by fellow writer Pat Conroy.
The book is, in part, dedicated to the memory of Conroy, and features his quote from “A Lowcountry Heart”: “We are here because of our love of this incomparable portion of the earth. We are here because we have Lowcountry hearts.”
But do they really get this low-lying sweep of unusual people and places between Edisto Island and Daufuskie Island?
Here’s proof that they do: They list the Edisto Island Serpentarium as something you need to do before you die. This is the funky creation of the late Heyward F. Clamp Jr. and his brother, Ted, that grew from decades of adventures with Lowcountry reptiles. I first discovered Heyward Clamp in a framed photo hung in the Wood Bros. Store, itself a Lowcountry shrine on U.S. 17 in Green Pond. Clamp was holding up a rattle snake as big as a live oak.
But there’s more proof, with entries on the Fillin’ Station on Lady’s Island, Harold’s Country Club in Yemassee, Whaley’s on Edisto Island, the Pig at Coligny Plaza on Hilton Head Island, Eggs’n’tricities in Bluffton, Chiken Lickn in Hardeeville, the Port Royal Farmers Market, and the South Carolina Artisans Center in Walterboro.
“We really wanted to expose ourselves, and then our readers, to areas beyond what you think of as the coastal Lowcountry,” Lynn Seldon said. “That’s why we headed inland.”
There they found Rizer’s Pork & Produce on the farm where the Rizer family has been raising hogs and growing vegetables since 1952. Steak night draws people to the place on Confederate Highway near the town of Lodge in Colleton County.
The tips in the book are as much for locals as visitors, they say.
And in many ways they reveal who we are as a people. The Seldons told me we are a hospitable, entrepreneurial, hard-working people who can hold our own on the world stage.
They found young couples doing creative things in out of the way places, like William “Beau” Barnwell, “a 10th generation Lowcountry native, and his wife, Jackie, who grew up on Hilton Head Island” and have reimagined the family’s old Roxbury Mercantile on the Edisto Island National Scenic Byway as “a restaurant specializing in Southern hospitality, craft cocktails, and classic Lowcountry cuisine.”
The Seldons also found people who don’t want an overcrowded business, or an overcrowded life. They found a new emphasis on the area’s long-marginalized Gullah culture and its links to the beginnings of the Reconstruction era.
The book shows that this is not your grandfather’s Lowcountry. It’s one with the chic Jazz Corner on Hilton Head, the Beaufort International Film Festival, and the ta·ca·rón shop on the Okatie Highway halfway between Beaufort and Bluffton that offers obscure niche wines and exotic cigars in what it calls “a Cuban experience like no other.”
The world, as it turns out, is our oyster.
David Lauderdale may be reached at lauderdalecolumn@gmail.com.