A Visit To The Low Country Region South Carolina
Field Notes · Charleston, South Carolina
Down the
Avenue of the Oaks
Boone Hall, the Avenue of the Oaks, and a tour of The Citadel — three beautiful things, each impactful in its own way.
The oaks were here long before the movie, and they'll outlast the memory of it.
You may know Boone Hall without knowing you know it — Allie's family summer house in The Notebook. The antebellum mansion sits just outside Charleston, and it holds the distinction of being one of America's oldest working plantations, growing crops on this same ground for more than 320 years.
Every blessing carries its wound. The word itself comes from the French blessure. The moss is gorgeous. The ground is heavy. Both are true, and a place this old asks you to hold them at once.
Across town, The Citadel — the Military College of South Carolina. Its story starts in the early 1800s with state arsenals in Charleston and Columbia, and it has been in the business of making leaders ever since.
Established in 1842, it stands as one of six senior military colleges in the country: eighteen academic departments across five schools, twenty-three majors, thirty-eight minors. You feel the order of the place the moment you walk the campus. Some institutions teach subjects. This one teaches bearing.
A city like this reveals itself best at street level — through the small frame, walked rather than toured. A few from the road:
Charleston is the kind of place you leave with more than you brought — a few small, life-enhancing thoughts, and, once, a Scottish Terrier who was born here. Some ports of call rearrange the furniture in your head. This one just quietly hands you the key.
Travel well. And prosper.