CHARLESTON MAGAZINE'S NEW ONLINE DINING GUIDE
The City Magazine Since 1975

Odes to the Lowcountry: Local writers reflect on this place we love to call home, expounding on everything from hidden alleyways to pluff mud

Odes to the Lowcountry: Local writers reflect on this place we love to call home, expounding on everything from hidden alleyways to pluff mud
August 2023

Find inspiration in rising tides, sweet tea, and the pulse of city streets



Along the Water’s Edge (sepia-toned, limited-edition, black-and-white print, 2009) by Ben Ham, benhamimages.com

Secret Places
Finding wonder and welcome in Charleston’s hidden alleys
Written by Stephanie Hunt

I landed in Charleston on July 1, 1993—the first day of the city’s hottest July since 1895. My husband, infant daughter, and I felt warmly welcomed, literally, by 17 days of 100-plus mercury. So much for Southern hospitality. It’s a blur now, mostly because my sunglasses were constantly fogged up from walking out of our hyper-chilled apartment into the scorching summer soup....>>READ MORE

Life by Tides
Paying attention to the rise and fall—and what the water brings
Written by Sandy Lang

In a sailboat we called the Eel Pye, we’d drifted right up to a dozen or more dolphins that were in a swirl, almost a frenzy, of fishing. It was a summer afternoon on the Fort Johnson side of the harbor, where the water was mixing with a changing tide. It was one of those scenes that gets seared in memory, a little movie to be played later—the dolphins’ slippery gray backs rising over and over, twisting in water that popped with a school of silvery fish....>>READ MORE

Sweet Tea
The congenial power of the South’s favorite cool, sugary drink
Written by Renae Brabham

Sweet tea—I love everything about it, except the taste. What? you ask. A Southerner who doesn’t like sweet tea? Surely, you jest. Nope, that’s the God’s-honest truth, but I do truly appreciate what the drink represents in my beloved South: hospitality....>>READ MORE

Pluff Mud
Ahh, the pungent smell of home
Written by Buff Ross

In the early-’90s after graduating from college, I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, seeking mountains, snow, and access to the desert. It couldn’t have been a more disparate topography from the Lowcountry of my youth. For a variety of reasons, I missed my first Thanksgiving and Christmas back in the South, and before I realized it, a year and a half had passed since I had been home. That continues to be my longest contiguous absence from Charleston without at least a visit....>>READ MORE

The Pulse
A poem about Charleston by the city’s first poet laureate
Written by Marcus Amaker

Where the sidewalks scream 
on Saturday nights
and the corners rotate 
budding musicians
with skin-tight dreams...>>READ MORE
 

Web Extra - Love Charleston? Read on. We’ve gathered 20 years of personal essays about Lowcountry life.