Rooted in Nature

The beautiful influences that shape the landscape of Callawassie’s heart and soul.

Talk to anyone on Callawassie Island and it won’t be more than a few words floating by before you start to hear a familiar song. It’s a song of harmony between the island’s natural beauty and the people whose attention it has captivated decades. Those who find their home here do so not just as bystanders or consumers, but as stewards and caretakers of the land and all its inhabitants. The result is a symbiotic balance of give and take where both people and place become renewed and restored together.

There’s a piece of that formula detectable in every corner of Callawassie – at the center of every club and event, in the heart of every home and lot, and at the core of every resident or staff representative. One member with more than a birds-eye view on this subject is Scott Comes, who has been involved with the Ecology Committee on nearly every level as committee member,  liaison, and board member.

Once a club, now a committee, this active and instrumental group has grown in its ability to serve the natural surroundings from the island outward, including the impact of its environmental health on all the lowcountry waterways.

Citizen Science Projects

Comes paints a picture of the committee’s work that covers both the professional side (monitoring, development, education) and personal (a passion for preservation and appreciation). Among the more interesting building blocks of those efforts are countless Citizen Science Projects that rally all residents to play a specific hands-on part in their care of Callawassie and its smallest inhabitants.

While projects like the Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count are more well known and happen nationwide (going strong for 125 years!), Callawassie islanders get down in the (literal) weeds with unique if not adorable additional nature projects like bluebird monitoring and the caterpillar count.

Caterpillar Count
According to Comes, Callawassie is the farthest South reporting entity funneling intel on caterpillar quotas to the University of North Carolina. Trees are tagged for caterpillar activity and groups go out regularly to take caterpillar attendance to be used in academic research. If the ecology of the island’s fauna is going to remain in balance, they have to have enough to eat. (Don’t tell the caterpillars.)

Bluebird Monitoring
The bluebird monitoring project sends volunteers – 6 teams of 8 – to examine bluebird boxes that have been interspersed throughout the island, checking for any nests that have been built in them, eggs laid, how many, if they hatched, and if the fledglings are thriving. This initiative alone is about 50 members strong and was one of the first things that drew Comes to dive into environmental caretaking when moving to CI with his family.

Adopt-a-Stream Waterway Salinity
The project he finds most absorbing today is the work members are doing with the Adopt a Stream program, sampling freshwater and saltwater from the lowcountry to Macon, GA and reporting back to the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services.  Explaining why he and other members are particularly intrigued by the findings of this study, Comes mentions how interconnected it is – literally and figuratively – with the bigger lowcountry picture from its neighboring Spring Island to CI’s function within the Port Royal Sound.

“The salinity project particularly interests me because of the uniqueness of Callawassie’s waterways. The Colleton River dumps into the Broad and then into the ocean. There’s no headwater so it’s not really a river, it’s just the ocean coming in or out with the tide. So though we’re 10 or 15 miles from the ocean, the water that covers that distance is almost the same salinity as the ocean itself. The river is the ocean flowing in Callawassie’s backyard.”

Depending on weather events, it can also be a river of rain like after Hurricane Helene dropped 10 inches of rain in a weekend. Comes discovered, “a week later, the salinity was still cut in half from the runoff, and that lasted nearly a month. It shows how much runoff affects the water and the marine life.” Asked how the fish fare in that sort of abrupt rearrangement, Comes shares what the experts have taught the Committee, encouraging that “bigger fish know how to survive and do a deep dive to get to the more undisturbed streams of water, and the little fish are pretty resilient.”

These expert relationships keep the committee and residents informed and educated on the subjects they’re monitoring, and in reverse outside entities are benefitted by their involvement, support, and findings, like the Port Royal Sound Foundation’s Maritime Center where one recent fundraiser with 200+ in attendance from all over the lowcountry counted nearly 20% as Callawassie Island members.

Environmental Events

At home, the Ecology Committee hosts dinners and other events that invite local experts around 4 times a year, attended by 80 to 100 on average and lead by guest speakers from outlets like the fish hatchery, the raptor center in Charleston (who Comes said brought winged headliners who flew around the room), and other experts on sharks, snakes, and a roster of other lowcountry regulars.

Like many, Comes’s story isn’t one where he brought his life’s work with him to the island (i.e., industry background). “My history with this topped out at the level of birdfeeders in my backyard. But everything changes when you cross that causeway. This way of living is different. Living on the marsh, we have a dock that I monitor and bring back the ‘dock report’ to my wife who,” he adds wryly, “can’t wait to hear everything I have to tell her.”

Agronomy and Common Property

The Ecology Committee falls under the work done by CI’s Director of Agronomy Billy Bagwell who Comes mentions at almost every turn in this story. Bagwell leads the charge in the newsworthy and notable things like the island’s three-courses-in-three-years golf course renovation project as well as overseeing everyday ongoing maintenance and management, island-wide. Comes shares, “He keeps notebooks describing every animal, insect, and plant, that the Ecology Committee used to post helpful information online [on the member site] under the Ecology Guide. Plus he’s worked to modify water usage to reduce the amount of water needed, so we don’t have giant irrigation areas if you just want to target one little spot.”

There are countless other CI clubs, organizations, and initiatives that come together to fill out the big picture of ecological and environmental impact, like the Gardening Club that keeps its green thumb on the pulse of how the island grows, and the Sustainability Club that was integral in getting distinctive recycling cans placed and sharing info on common needs like recycling batteries and separating waste along the golf and tennis court areas. Even the Paddler’s Club gets in on the action through the Marsh Clean Up where, as Comes puts it, “the marsh does a good job of cleaning itself, but we did find a mattress once, so there are plenty of ways we can pitch in so the marsh is able to do what it does best.”

Can We Do More

Some of the most comprehensive efforts come from the Common Property and Open Spaces (CPOS) Committee that spends its time making sure everything across the causeway is kept looking “nurtured but natural.” Comes explains, “This crew reports to Billy monitoring and managing things like invasive species as well as island-wide cleanup of things like roadsides and dead branches.”

Comes’s report on this committee’s recent work is one that reveals the common heart of Callawassie, the warmth and connection that residents hold toward this distinctive homestead.

With the amount of growth the area has seen in recent years and how this affected even Callawassie with trees going down, houses going up, and more people, the board decided that properties owned by the board were going to be put into Common Properties that cannot be built on and remain natural and protected. “There were 20 lots identified for this project,” explains Comes, “which was a lot considering no one can sell that property, it won’t bring in dues, there will be fewer owners to shoulder the costs, versus the preservation of environmental space, animal habitats, woodland greenery. The presentation and discussion about what this would mean for owners was met with overwhelming support. There was almost no resistance. On the contrary the prevailing sentiment was: ‘Can We Do More?’”

“Can We Do More” is the heartsong of the island no matter the subject whether fundraising for local charities, opportunities and amenities for owners and families of all ages and interests, serving neighbors’ needs. Perhaps more than anything, though, the residents of the isle of “calm waters” take seriously the privilege of protecting perfection and nurturing the natural world in this place of unnatural peace and beauty.

With every win – every bluebird and caterpillar counted, every marsh and mooring cleaned, every woodland lot preserved – the pride of fulfilled purpose is short lived as the community’s focuses quickly turn toward the next hill and new possibilities, asking time and time again what more can be done for the place that has done everything for them.

Enjoyed learning more about Callawassie Island?
Read the previous blog here.