flows and rains, with excess water stored in surrounding
spongy wetlands. Similar to lungs that allow us to breathe and
kidneys that help filter out impurities, these wetlands promise
healthy water that is vital to humans and wildlife.
The river is stained black by tannin released from decaying
plant matter. Though dark, the waters are clear like iced tea in
a glass. Because the waters move slowly, they are also highly
changeable.
The Edisto Basin supports an abundance of living
communities, ecosystems of complex relations, some that
depend on each other, others that compete. Each of these
communities has its own structure—from the largest
animals to the tiniest bacteria. The presence of threatened
and endangered species such as piping plover, red-cockaded
woodpeckers, wood storks and short-nosed sturgeon is
an indication that the Edisto Basin contains intact and
uncontaminated habitats. The Edisto offers a fluid pathway to
living museums. Its low sandy banks provide stages for daily
performances in the theater of natural and human history.
The river has played a significant role in our past, a place
of abundance for the earliest native tribal people. When
Europeans arrived by ship, first the Spaniards in the early
1500s, then the French and eventually the English, the Edisto
Edisto River: Black Water Crown Jewel has earned five
national awards, including the best photography book
of 2015 by the USA Book News and Foreword Review’s
INDIEFAB Editor Choice’s Prize for Nonfiction Book of
the Year.
Foreword Review describes it as “a photography book
par excellence … a work so loaded with knowledge and
factual wisdom it defies belief.” It also calls it “a last word
on coffee table books.”
The 272-page book features more than 300 color
images, all captured by naturalist photographer Larry
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was the portal to the interior of the Carolinas.
The river offered our ancestors life-sustaining resources
that served the South’s thriving Antebellum economy,
supporting cotton as well as rice and indigo cultivation. After
the Civil War during reconstruction, it was a source of timber
and was heavily mined for phosphate used in fertilizer. Today,
the Edisto River is one of South Carolina’s most significant
rivers for manufacturing, agriculture, and ecotourism. It’s the
state’s most heavily used river for irrigation.
Time spent on the Edisto River allows for contemplation,
a natural sanctuary to ponder who we are in relation to other
living things. The Edisto is fished in, played in, lived in, and
driven over every day.
This book, and the many people who helped make it
happen, recognize the importance of the Edisto River. It is
our hope that the beauty of the work contained in its pages
inspires more people to know, care for, and love this black
water river. NK
Susan Kammeraad-Campbell is the publisher and editorin-chief of Summerville-based Joggling Board Press (www.
jogglingboardpress.com) and co-author of Edisto River:
Black Water Crown Jewel.
Price. Researched and narrated by Rosie Price and Susan
Kammeraad-Campbell, the book tells both a natural and
human history of one of the most ecologically significant
rivers in North America.
The four-color images that fill its pages are bound in
a large-format, hand-stitched, cloth-covered casing with
scruff-resistant jacket sporting a French fold. Copies of
Edisto River ($49.98) are available at local independent
retailers and through Joggling Board Press. Visit
www.jogglingboardpress.com. Mention this article
for an autographed copy.
Naturally Kiawah