There’s a sly wink in the MARSH acronym, like the jovial twinkle you catch in Joel Caldwell, Blake Suárez, and Blake Scott’s eyes, even early in the morning after a late night at the rollicking RECESS event—a fundraiser during which local artists made art focused on ecology, stewardship, and community to benefit the group. These three dads, with six kids under age five between them, have been up with their wee ones for hours, but still they’re jazzed to talk about their “other child,” the scrappy nonprofit whose name stands for “Marsh Appreciation and Restoration Society for Happiness.” Yep, a mouthful, but a happy, smiley-face mouthful.
Caldwell and “the Blakes” are neighbors in Wagener Terrace. Suárez, a graphic designer whose logos and labels, including those on Edmund’s Oast beer cans, are ubiquitous around town, and Caldwell, a photographer and writer, bring their creative, art-forward energy to the project, while Scott, a historian and international studies professor at the College of Charleston, adds research muscle. “It started with us just hanging out in the neighborhood, walking along Halsey Creek, and imagining a clean, healthy creek our kids could safely explore,” says Scott. They invited neighbors to an ad hoc litter cleanup, drawing a crowd of 50. “We realized people were itching for ways to connect with nature, to have a positive, if small, impact,” says Caldwell, who was already invested in rewilding his own yard, avoiding chemicals and replacing the lawn with native plants and pollinators to enhance biodiversity. “It’s amazing how quickly it transforms into a dynamic ecosystem,” he says of the butterflies, birds, caterpillars, and critters that now populate his garden and entertain his two little girls.
The project’s mission is to “rewild and ecologically restore Charleston’s unique salt-marsh ecosystem,” starting, backyard-style, with the one-mile Halsey Creek corridor. The strategy, the means, is to counteract the despair lurking in the climate-catastrophe zeitgeist and make it a party. “We don’t want to be angry activists. You just can’t live like that,” says Caldwell. “The happiness part is very intentional, and we think, essential. We need to save everything we can.” “So let’s make it fun, with a youthful energy!” Suárez adds. Hence the block parties; the kid-friendly, hands-on activities; collaborations with Clemson Design Center; native-plant seed collecting and planting days; and a historical Wagener Terrace walking tour, complete with pizza and wine, with the Preservation Society of Charleston, a MARSH Project partner who recently joined the team in erecting an official historic marker on Halsey Creek.
“It’s so gratifying to go out and plant—a tactile, tangible way of encouraging more life around here,” says Scott. And perhaps equally gratifying to reward that labor with an Edmund’s Oast Yaupon Amber Ale (a portion of sales support the MARSH Project), its Suárez-designed label “flooded with history, both of the creek’s and the plant’s story,” Scott adds. As they restore the creek corridor, the trio is unearthing the forgotten stories of the marsh and waterway and shaping a new story—one of interconnectedness, hope, and positive change.
“Everything we do in our yards impacts our marshes and waterways,” says Caldwell. “And with something like 80 percent of all land east of the Mississippi in private ownership, conservation and restoration needs to start on private property, in our own yards. We need a new collective imagination for what’s possible.”
Learn more: themarshproject.com
