What Surrounds Us

Watching the water sparkle as the sun wanes, and a breeze begins, I wonder how this show looked long before we were here.  In 1663, when William Hilton sailed and lent this headland over looking the marshland that made up the land mass in that area his name, did he watch the water sparkle or was he busily studying what charts he had to find a way back?

What Surrounds Us

I've read a bit about Columbus and his three (or was it four?) trips more than a century earlier from Spain to what was termed Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic).  To me his ability find his way back in a tiny boat using the stars to guide him is nothing short of a miracle.  I can't help but think methods and tools for navigation had changed much between the early 1500's and the mid 1600's.  Not like today when we moved from detailed charts buoys and lighthouses to GPS.

Captain Hilton, a resident of Charlestown in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was twice commissioned by merchants in Massachusetts to explore and map the Carolina coastal land.  During his second trip aboard his ship Adventure, he spotted a headland which he used to mark the entrance to the Port Royal Sound.  This headland later became known as Hilton's Head and the island on which it stood, Hilton Head Island.

 As a longtime sailor and explorer, he probably wasn't struck by how the sun danced on the waters the way a city boy from Illinois is tonight.  The tide is coming in, lending motion to this water that the slight breeze lacks the strength to provide.  An old man trudges past with his tiny dog and stares in at us.  He too seems immune to the charms of the light dancing on the waters, finding us more fascinating for reasons I will never understand.  We've waved at times, but he seems not to notice, so perhaps he doesn't see us at all, and the faraway stare is really fixed on some memory or other.  I can't believe it's all that pleasant--his brow's too furrowed for that.

All too often we all seem to busy ourselves with other things and forget to take in what surrounds us. That probably goes for the people in our lives as well.  Probably ought to get in touch with some tonight....