High Tide Is a Relative Term

When Tony and Donna arose looking for coffee, I was reading about Lincoln's "Team of Rivals". I followed Tony up to his office where he introduced me to the frustrations of sudoku, much as he had the frustrations of golf many years ago. Possibly out of habit, he checked the tide tables - Donna says people who live on the marsh "live and die by the tides" - and was surprised to find that today and tomorrow promised an extraordinary 7.1 foot tide. And sure enough. . .

The view above, from the back porch, shows Boone Hall Creek higher than I've ever seen it. I suspect occasional storm surges were probably higher, but what surprised me was that when I had been out there earlier (yesterday's pictures) I was sure that was high tide. Obviously, like so many other things, High Tide is relative.

The real (and really) high tide occasioned a visit to the dock so, with coffee and cigarettes and camera the three of us traipsed out to the dock to survey nature. The egret in the picture above might not have minded Tony, Donna and me, but he wasn't going to share the dock with Murphy, Ellen's Westie.

Absolutely everything is interesting to Murphy; a reed floating by or a mullet trying to fly. Young and curious describes Murphy pretty well.

Compare the level of tide in this picture (or the first two) with the level in yesterday's pictures, remembering that those pictures were taken only a couple hours prior to these.

All the birds in the area are not as quiet as the egret. This C-17 Globemaster III is a common sight around Charleston. The Air Force operates from Charleston under the Air Mobility Command.

With the egret elsewhere, Murphy was the only wildlife available to shoot (no pun intended). He appears to be "with the program" in these pictures but, believe me, it was the persistence of the photographer that was paramount in this case.

I don't know whether or not Murphy likes to swim, but he certainly likes to wade. When the water comes up into the yard, you're never quite sure just what comes with it. Murphy takes it as a personal challenge to find anything of interest the incursion of the water may have brought.