Jan. 2, 2005

We planned our launch time to be able to take advantage of the tide coming in for the first few miles and then being behind us as we followed the South Edisto River down to the gap at Fenwick Island where the ICW turned off.  This worked very well. I had vowed to make it a shorter, lighter day. We needed to camp this night because there were no road access points until we got to Sam’s point near Beaufort. It had been suggested that we follow the tide out to Otter Island, a sandy island near the coast at the mouth of St. Helena Sound to camp.  Instead we saw a sandy beach on the shore of  Fenwick Cut and decided to stop early and camp on the bluff just above.  I had tied the boat from three directions to some trees that leaned out across the water. We had all our bags up on the bluff and were setting up the tent when we heard some splashing across the cut. Two black dogs were running along the shore.  The swift current that had brought us in was flowing through the gap. The dogs went to the upstream end and then began to swim across to our side.  We were about to have company. 

They arrived within a few minutes all happy to see us and started sniffing around our campsite for food that they could grab and run off with. Heather got everything inside the tent and I took them for a walk along the shore.  The larger dog was a cocoa colored Labrador and the smaller seemed to be her puppy. It was black and full of puppy power. The two soaking wet, muddy  friends and I walked the beach while Heather explored around the campsite. Twenty feet away she found the scat of some large bovine creature that apparently also lived here. There were also numerous tracks that looked like deer tracks but they did not come to a point. 

After we were in the tent at 5:30 wondering how to make 13 hours pass before we could join the tide again, my mind started to suspect they were from wild pigs. I have never encountered wild boars but guessed this would be a likely place to meet them. But our two watchdogs had decided they had a better chance of getting fed by us than swimming back in the dark to the other side from where they had come. I also suspected that the noises that several dolphins made while fishing in the cut kept them from going back.  For several hours they ran around the tent occasionally stopping to push their wet noses against the thin mosquito netting on my side. I elbowed one of them and finally they decided to sit down and make themselves comfortable for a while. But during the night they had to get up and check out the surroundings, bark at the dolphins, crunch on an empty water bottle to tell us they were hungry and make other noises to get my mind wondering what they had found in the boat to chew up. 

I finally got up, took the flashlight and went to check on the boat. It seemed to be fine and untouched by the dogs. I returned to the tent and tried to make myself comfortable.  I had persuaded Heather that opening up our food and having dinner might just tempt our new friends to invade through the Mosquito netting boundary we had established. Oh well, I always say it is much healthier to go to sleep on an empty stomach.  Sleep?  That was not in my future for hours to come. I continued to wonder if the bull pastured on this island that left his calling card twenty feet away would come to stomp on us or the heard of wild boars that left those tracks would tear into us with there reputedly sharp tusks or the rabid raccoons would come down out of the trees to find our food and mess up our boat as they had once two years ago in Florida.  A mind such as mine sleeps little in a place where it is not familiar. 

The 13 hours in the tent went by one at a time. I marveled at Heather’s ability to sleep and wondered how this active mind next to her was failing to communicate any of its apprehension about our situation. Could she really be so confident in my company that she could be sleeping?  For a minute I felt a sense of pride that she trusted me that much but it soon turned into a sense of disgust with myself for being so foolish as to worry about all these things.  The night finally passed. The dogs slept by our side keeping the wild boars, raccoons and bulls away. I think they actually gave me the confidence to go asleep for a few intervals between checks of my watch. I felt watched out for by these two friends in spite of my feelings about them. It had been a two dog night after only an 11 mile day. 

Emma Dog and Chocolate Mama on the trail of the wild boars(?)