Photography by Ed Funk

ust up the road from us a couple of hours lies a town that could arguably be called the sister town of Bluffton. Just off of Highway 17, about halfway between Georgetown and South Carolina’s crown jewel of Charleston, rests a sleepy little shrimping village that goes by the name of McClellanville. McClellanville is today what Bluffton was a dozen years ago: small, quaint, and off the beaten track. McClellanville is today what Bluffton is today: a hidden secret that has been exposed with an influx of visitors who choose not to ever leave. And though Bluffton has given her children many great things through the years, there’s one thing that can only be claimed by McClellanville: it’s the birthplace of South Carolina’s first Poet Laureate.

Archibald Rutledge was born on October 23rd, 1883, at his family’s summer home in McClellanville. Though this article is not intended to be a history lesson on Rutledge (though I wouldn’t mind that task at all) it is important to give some background information on him to lend credence to the rest of this column.

Rutledge grew up in the Lowcountry on his family’s plantation, named “Hampton”, just outside of McClellanville. When he was three, he announced to his parents that he had “made a poem”:

“I saw a little rattlesnake
Too young to make
his rattles shake.”

Since that first verse, Rutledge went on to produce 25 volumes of poetry, 45 volumes of prose, and a handful of books. He was named the first Poet Laureate of South Carolina in 1934 and held that honor until his death in 1973. Rutledge was awarded more than 20 honorary degrees and 30 gold medals for his works and was second only tow Robert Frost and Edna Millay in two separate Pulitzer competitions. When he lost the Nobel Prize to William Faulkner, the judges announced that Archibald Rutledge had only been beaten by one vote.

My mother got me hooked on Archibald Rutledge and his nature-specific writing style with the book Home by the River. Rutledge was absent from the country that he loved for nearly 30 years while he taught English up north. Upon his return, he settled in to the task of restoring Hampton Plantation to its original splendor. Home by the River, published in 1944, is a chronicle of that restoration and the people and animals that inhabited the plantation. The writing fascinates me in its simple descriptiveness. When reading his writing, I can see myself clearly in the exact time and space as he eloquently and humorously describes the wildlife and rivers around his family home.

I was sitting at my desk the other day and picked up a copy of Home by the River that was crowding my desk corner. I randomly flipped through the pages and stopped on a passage where Rutledge was describing the time he accidentally stepped on an alligator’s head. I looked up from my reading and noticed a beautiful red-tailed hawk perched on the top of a dead pine tree in my yard. I flipped back through the book and read a short bit about a rabbit swimming across a flooded river. I looked up again and this time saw a fox squirrel bound across the corner of the yard towards an oak tree.

It then occurred to me that what I was reading was a description of my own back yard. Of all the places I have lived in America, Bluffton is truly one of the most wildlife friendly communities. I decided that I would make a quick list of what wildlife I had seen within walking distance of my house. It took no time at all to put two dozen birds down on my list, including eagles, ducks, and hawks, deer galore, squirrels, foxes, turtles, raccoons, rabbits, turkeys, a few alligators, half a dozen different varieties of snakes, possum, and even a stray armadillo or two! And this doesn’t even get near what we can find in the water. The fact is, no matter where you live in Bluffton – in the woods or in a development or downtown – everyone is within a 5 minute drive where each one of the species listed above can be seen…be it at a public boat landing, Picnkney Island, or a stroll along the Linear Trail.

The Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program is a program sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and the South Carolina Wildlife Federation that creates a way that individuals and homeowners can enhance wildlife habitat right on their own property. And it’s as simple as pie. All you need to begin a wildlife habitat is a source of food and water, cover for protection from predators and the elements, and place to raise young. The Federation has expanded its programs to included schoolyards and industrial sites as well.

Formally created in 1995 by as an extension of the backyard program, the National Wildlife Federation began the Schoolyard Program to focus specifically on using school grounds as learning sites for wildlife conservation and cross-curricular learning. To date, the NWF has certified more than 1000 schools nationwide. Right here in Bluffton, Cross Episcopal School, just behind Scott’s, has begun the transformation of their grounds to a certified habitat. When completed, the students at Cross will have a schoolyard that Archibald Rutledge himself would be proud to write about, filled with songbirds and small ground mammals, insects and critters, and maybe even a friendly little snake or two. Students will be able to learn year-round about the habits and rituals of wildlife and see families of animals give birth, grow and interact.

To learn more about creating and building you own backyard habitat, go online to the South Carolina Wildlife Federation at www.scwf.org, or call them at 803-256-0670. By certifying your yard, you will get a placard of certification to display in your yard that signifies you are actively participating in mitigating the damages created by the destruction of natural habitats. As an added and inherent bonus, you will soon be enjoying the sounds of songbirds that call your yard home, the splashes of colors from myriad butterflies, and the choral symphonies of frogs and insects, while bats and lizards will act as natural pest control systems. Nature will bring the classroom right to your back doorstep Herself. And you may be finding yourself describing your yards as Archibald Rutledge once did: “…a wild flower is one of life’s extras, one of those things that we do not have to have but which we enjoy all the more for that very reason.”