Lauren Green
Five years ago my family moved to Idaho. The rugged mountains and farmlands of my new home are beautiful, but whenever I think of my childhood, I remember Georgia and the southern marshlands where I grew up.
For most of my childhood, I lived in the small town of Keller, Georgia. Our property was down a bumpy dirt road on a tidal creek that went out to a major river. Our house was a beautiful old brick home, one that we could only afford to rent because the owner gave us a huge discount when she heard my dad was a pastor. As much as we loved the house, the real beauty of our home was in the land itself.
Our house was positioned on a small peninsula jutting out into marshlands, and a tidal creek ran right beside our house. Keller was close enough to the brackish river for residents to smell salt water when breezes came in, but from where we were on the marsh the smell was even stronger. At times, the smell was so strong I could taste the salt on my tongue. Out across our creek and the marshland all around our house, marsh grass stretched on forever, and wind rushing across the top of that marsh grass made beautiful music.
We spent many sunny days and starry nights sitting down at the creek, listening to shrimp pop the top of the water and fiddler crabs run across oyster shells. During the hot, sticky, Georgia summers, my brothers and I often went swimming at high tide, and at low tide we went tromping through the marsh in old tennis shoes with Scout, our white lab, following at our heels. The thick marsh mud claimed its fair share of shoes, and every once in a while we ended up having to find our way back to shore barefoot, squealing as brown muck squished between our toes.
The marshland was dense with wildlife, some of which provided our summer meals. While tiny fiddler crabs comically scuttled everywhere, we were more interested in setting traps for larger blue crabs, which were our favorite dinner. In the cool of the evening my dad and older brother cast out nets for shrimp, and then the whole family would sit out by the creek cleaning shrimp. The work was fun and always rewarded with a seafood dinner, usually a low country boil of shrimp and crab.
However, not all of the wildlife was edible. We were always wary to watch out for bull sharks, which sometimes wander into tidal creeks, and salties, giant saltwater crocodiles. My brothers and I were scared stiff for months after hearing the stories about them from our neighbors, but we never saw any in our own creek. However, a couple times a year, bottlenose dolphins came up into the creek chasing shrimp at high tide. They would slide up into the marsh grass, trapping shrimp in the grass. After trapping their meal, they’d eat the shrimp before jumping back into the water.
Another of our favorite events of the year was the appearance of turtles. Every year a few would come up out of the creek and lay their eggs in our yard. After watching them lay their eggs, we’d wait with anticipation for the eggs to hatch, and we would often set up protection for the nest from raccoons. Watching the turtles hatch and crawl out to the water was spellbinding. I was always caught in the wonder of it – how the mothers found their way back to our yard, where they had hatched, and how the eggs always hatched at high tide so the hatchlings could swim off to the river. Watching this phenomenon is one of my favorite childhood memories.
I was too young to appreciate what we had in our home. The salty breezes were status quo then, and I was accustomed to free seafood dinners and roaming free out into the marshland. Looking back now, I can see how lucky I was. I grew up in the boondocks of South Georgia, and no matter where I go throughout life, that will always be part of me. I’ll always look back at muddy marshlands, brackish water, and salt air with nostalgia, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing it.
