Rivers, Roads, Woods

Left: The ACE Basin ends (and begins) at sea's edge. On wild Botany Bay Island, volunteers watch over nests of loggerhead turtles and make sure the young find their way into the surf.

"We saw what was coming, and that wasn't acceptable," recalls Charles Lane, a founding member of the task force whose family home here dates to the mid-19th century. "The ACE Basin is loved. It's nurtured. It's full of endangered species, but man is part of the landscape. This is our culture, our way of life."

Visitors quickly notice how the region's lived-in look fits comfortably among great swells of greenspaces, even in town. On its northern end, in the middle of Walterboro, the Great Swamp Sanctuary sidles alongside the headwaters of the Ashepoo, one exit off I-95. Far to the south, loggerhead turtles love the other color of the wild--black. With no lights blazing from seaside condos, they lay their eggs at night on Botany Bay Island, one of the largest nesting areas in the state.

Many folks come to paddle rivers such as the Edisto, with its banks of fall-reddened cypress. Others drive the small roads that breeze past plantations, duck into swamps and dark woodlands, and pause at country churches and crossroad stores. State 21, with pillars of live oaks lining its two lanes, gives new meaning to the words "Sunday drive." High limbs arch above the pavement like ecclesiastical gables of a long, green nave.

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