By Sharyn Ellison
For Coastal Senior

Michael Ellison photo
The dunes of Seabrook Island provide habitat for wildlife and play host to a variety of native plant life.

If you go Seabrook Island is a private 2,200-acre resort community and club located 30 minutes south of Charleston, S.C. For information, contact Great Beach Vacations, 1-800-845-2233, or go online, www.seabrook.com. Facilities include tennis courts, an equestrian center, two golf courses and a marina with shops and restaurants. There are no hotels or high-rise condos on the island. One- to six-bedroom private homes, villas and cottages are designed to complement the island's natural beauty.

Living in the city has its perks, but sometimes we crave the less blemished serenity of more natural surroundings.

We set out from Charlotte early one October morning in search of Seabrook Island, S.C., that, according to the colorful brochures, should be the back-to-nature get-away we needed, with its abundant wildlife and pristine beaches.

Since the off-season rates were so affordable, we decided to see for ourselves if this coastal South Carolina paradise really did exist.

About 17 miles from Seabrook Island, a two-lane road plunged through a sandy landscape that was dotted with Lowcountry's trademark pines. The light traffic came to a halt while the swing bridge over the Stono River pulled back for a shrimp boat draped in green netting and its entourage of flapping brown pelicans. As we waited for the bridge, the moist morning air drifted through the car's open windows, bringing with it the pungent smell of salt water. Finally, the shrimp boat cleared the bridge and we were on our way again.

Our route wound through pine forests that rose with perfect posture to lofty heights, swaying in the wind to the melody of a silent waltz. Main Road changed names several times. One of the names, Bohicket Road, tickled my imagination. It is a hiccup-y sounding word that I enjoyed saying over and over - Bohicket, Bohicket, Bohicket. I asked my husband, Michael, if he thought Bohicket Road was named for a person, perhaps a local Civil War hero. He said he thought it sounded more like a local whiskey.



Private homes, villas and cottages on Seabrook Island are tucked away naturally among the island's towering Oak trees.

As we debated the origins of Bohicket, we drove into a tunnel of ancient, gnarly oaks. From their great, muscular branches, Spanish moss drooped like wizards' sleeves. Finally, we rounded a curve and into open marshland and the crisp whiteness of the autumn sunlight.

Then, up ahead, a sign pointed toward the entrance to Seabrook Island. We passed Bohicket Marina Village, where villas lined one side of the dock and pleasure boats the other. We pulled into the parking lot of the rental office and went inside.

While we were checking in, I said to the young woman behind the desk, "Who is Bohicket?"

She looked at me with a polite, but blank, smile.

Seeing that I had not asked the right question, I said, "Then what is Bohicket?"

I saw comprehension dawn. "Oh. Bohicket Creek," she said.

"What does Bohicket mean?" I persisted.

She gave a shrug. "I don't know," she said, then cheerfully handed over the gate pass and the keys to the condo and told us to enjoy our stay.

As we drove past the guardhouse, Michael said he would treat me to a glass of local aged Bohicket whiskey at dinner that night. I told him it would probably give me the hiccups.

Seabrook Island is a gated golf resort community. It also has tennis courts and a marina on Bohicket Creek, which we passed after the guard waved us through. The street snaked through dense vegetation that shielded the large houses from the blinding sunshine, creating an atmosphere of shadowy secrecy. Many of the houses were tall and plantation-like, surrounded by palmetto palms and a profusion of thriving rhododendrons. Mystical, Medusa-like oaks towered above everything. As we drove slowly down the winding boulevard, the wind rattling through the palmettos was the only sound.

Our condo faced the beach, and through the wide glass door we had a view of rolling dunes and the endless, gray Atlantic. It was still early and the sunshine and the all-but-deserted beach beckoned, so we headed out across the boardwalk. The tide was out and long-legged shorebirds scurried along in front of us, stopping periodically to poke their pointy beaks into the sand in search of sustenance. Hundreds of crab holes dotted the sand like tiny moon craters. Occasionally a burrowing crab stuck its head out into the light, but quickly vanished into the safety of the small darkness.



Boardwalk to nowhere - or infinity? This boardwalk takes you to the center of the surrounding marsh and beneath and endless blue canopy of sky.

We stopped walking and gazed around. There was no one else in sight. We looked at each other and laughed, and the salty breeze swept our laughter away, leaving only the sound of the ocean's percussion.

We spend the rest of the day exploring the beach and dunes. We spotted several dolphins cavorting in the surf, their silvery backs gleaming as they wove in and out of the sun-glazed water. Another boardwalk took us across the next dune, where we admired the still-blooming plants, intricate vines, and that ubiquitous little plant that looks like a green ace of clubs, but that my husband says is dollar weed.

The boardwalk wound through arches of twisted thickets, and as we walked in dappled shade we heard the white noise of the waves rolling onto the beach. We were startled out of our tranquility when a buck crashed through the undergrowth and stopped abruptly before us. We stared at him and he stared back, his head proudly balancing a rack that a hunter would covet. Finally, he snorted and stalked away, disappearing behind a three-story house that was under construction next to the boardwalk.

The next day was cold and blustery. After watching the brown pelicans dive for their breakfast, we drove around the island, periodically crossing the golf course where a few golfers were bravely whacking balls against the buffeting wind. Suddenly, two gray foxes scampered across the street in front of us, headed down a side street, then stopped to casually survey the area. They seemed unconcerned by our presence, and after awhile they turned and trotted across someone's backyard, then vanished into a palmetto grove.



Some guest accomodations overlook the marina, filled with bobbing boats of all sizes.

That night after a relaxing seafood dinner at a restaurant on the marina (where the bartender said Bohicket was just a creek, not a whiskey) we went back to our condo to watch cable TV.

We left Seabrook Island the next morning. As we drove slowly along the winding boulevard, we passed a doe grazing peacefully next to the curb. She didn't even look up as we passed. The vacation brochures had, indeed, been true to their claims that on Seabrook Island, wildlife and people co-exist harmoniously. As we drove past Bohicket Marina, over Bohicket Creek and back out onto Bohicket Road, I regretted that we had to leave the island's serenity so soon.

Not having found a satisfying answer to what exactly Bohicket is, when we arrived back home I consulted the modern-day crystal ball - the Internet. To my surprise, I received an instant response. According to Yahoo, Bohicket is "the soil where the life cycle for most all sea life begins." Bohicket - 200,000 acres of it - is the soil of South Carolina's coastal marshes and tidal creeks, which are where shrimp, crab, many species of birds and fish, and even dolphins, are born. Bohicket has been the birthplace of life on Seabrook Island, as well as a huge portion of the rest of the coastal South, for thousands of years. In a way, Bohicket really is a legendary hero, a caretaker at least, for the natural beauty of Seabrook Island and the wildlife that inhabits it.