![]() We walk through forests echoing with birdsong (more than 300 species live or migrate through here each year) and thick with centuries-old magnolia trees in full bloom. Because of that, and the fact that it’s so untouched, it’s like a Rosetta Stone of island ecology a place, as Hendricks says, of “hemispheric importance.” In the 13 years that Hendricks has worked on the island, it’s expanded 1,000 acres-about the size of 50 football fields-into the sea. Around 4,000 years ago, there was nothing here. ![]() Simons was formed from the sediment it carries and is expanding at an astonishing rate. The Altamaha River, Georgia’s largest, flows down from the high country in the north to the edge of this island, dumping 100,000 gallons per second of fresh water into the sea. It’s also, in geological terms, relatively new. “It has the answers to questions we’re not even thinking to ask yet.” Simon’s lead naturalist, as she shows me around. “It’s an ecological jewel,” says Stacia Hendricks, Little St. Photographs by Peter Frank Edwards, Redux Simons, however, a 50-mile drive and a short boat ride south of Sapelo, was spared development. First cultivated for shipbuilding and plantations in the 17th and 18th centuries, these islands became exclusive hunting lodges and winter vacation homes for wealthy industrialists in the 19th century. Simons Island, Sea Island, and Jekyll Island-named for their glittering amber dunes. I continue south to the first of Georgia’s four Golden Isles- Little St. People come and share their stories, and Grovner teaches me how to weave dried sweetgrass reeds into baskets, a craft featured in many museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. I’m shown shells and the sun-bleached sand dollars found on the beach. It’s palpable because, despite its challenges, Sapelo is a welcoming place. “That spirit comes from good times to bad times, from slavery to now, and that spirit is still here.” “The African American people are the spirit of Sapelo,” Bailey says. He works with younger generations to teach the farming techniques of his ancestors: growing red peas from heritage seeds and harvesting sugarcane to press into sweet syrup at the mill. Still, community members, including Maurice Bailey, are fighting to keep their roots alive. (Gullah tends to be the preferred name in North and South Carolina, Geechee in Georgia and Florida.) Their communities dot the barrier islands, but they are slowly disappearing as casualties of depopulation and urban development. John’s River in Florida to the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. The Gullahs (or Geechees) are descendants of the enslaved who lived and still live on the coast of the southeastern United States, from the St. She takes me to the Hog Hammock community, one of America’s last intact Gullah Geechee Island settlements. ( Being Gullah or Geechee, once looked down on, is now a treasured heritage.) It’s here where I meet Yvonne Grovner, a traditional Gullah Geechee basket weaver who uses sweetgrass reeds taken from the marsh to create beautiful patterns. But their presence represents a remarkable history. This tiny parcel of land-11 miles long and four miles wide at its broadest point-is home to fewer than 50 permanent residents. The story of Georgia’s coastal African American community continues 60 miles south of Savannah on Sapelo Island. You could sense her connection to the past. She shows me the market square where enslaved men, women, and children were bought and sold, the holding pens where they were kept like cattle, and the tiny arrow slits carved through thick granite walls for air.Īt the end of the tour, Goode-Walker bursts into song: “If I be a slave,” she sings, “I be buried in my grave and go home to my God and be free.” It’s a song that was sung by her ancestors. Vaughnette Goode-Walker, the owner of Footprints of Savannah Walking Tour Company, is a local historian who educates visitors about the coastal town’s history.
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