Cumberland Sound's interface where fresh and saltwater meet. Photo by Tom Poland CUMBERLAND SOUND, Fernandina Beach, Florida (Nov. 1, 2024): The catamaran motors by pelicans perched upon piers.
It passes monstrous, red-orange contraptions that could be the Martian craft from H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
The big cargo containers you see on 18-wheelers? These towering machines stack them on ships with great precision. Picking up speed, we cross a wavering white line of foam. It’s a curious thing, this white line.
Just ahead sits Cumberland Island, which has long held me in its thrall. I have yet to step ashore, yet to see Dungeness ruins up close, but I will. Right now I see the island’s wild horses from afar.
For now, though, my minds on the St. Marys River, a watery labyrinth that seems to wind through every marsh and island in sight. If I told you the St.
Marys begins as a small stream called River Styx, I would not be lying. If I said the river rises from the western edge of Trail Ridge, relic of a barrier island and dune system that, too, is true. If I write that the St.
Marys River loses its channel in the heart of the Okefenokee Swamp, I am not lying. If I told you the river forms Georgia’s southernmost boundary, I tell the truth. And were I to tell you it flows north at one juncture that too is true.
Poland The Amelia and East Rivers join the St. Marys here. Three rivers wind, bend, and U-turn as they carve treelike patterns into coastal landscapes.
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