Sooner or later most life in the Southeast and well beyond finds its way to the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Water, plants, and animals flow inexorably east to meet and mix with ocean tides, carrying remnant soils that form islands along the coast. Like other places where there exists a confluence of life, wars have ensued. People have been enslaved, armies victorious and defeated, native people extirpated, and the land used and used again for whatever would sustain people and turn a buck. Its natural history is a story of clear cutting, mining, farming, hunting, reconstruction and restoration. Its cultural history has been a stormy ebb and flow, leaving seemingly disparate bits and pieces of humanity from hither and yon. The Lowcountry is home to soldiers, the working sons and daughters of immigrants, the super rich in gated developments, a vibrant Gullah Geechee culture, and expanding thousands of nomads who exit I-95, take off their jackets and remain. Culturally, the Lowcountry is more of a rain forest than a temperate forest, as it contains many species, but few of any one.

The Lowcountry, a chapbook written by writer/producer Bill Pendergraft, captures in poems and photographs a bit of the plot, character and confli
ct of Lowcountry life. He is the founder of Environmental Media, a company that produces environmental education content.