BEAUTY WITHOUT WORDS

Brickhill River, GA 30º51.832N | 81º28.368W

Brickhill River, Cumberland Island, GA.

Cumberland Island, Georgia, is the largest of the Sea Islands, the barrier islands along the Atlantic Coast from South Carolina to Florida. It is 17.5 miles long, 36,415 acres of marsh, mudflats and tidal creeks. The island is covered by a dense forest of live oaks hung with Spanish moss and populated by wild horses, armadillos, turkeys and white-tailed deer.

Over the centuries Cumberland Island has been inhabited by the Timucua, the Spanish, the English, the Greene family and the Carnegies. It has been raided by pirates and occupied by British troops, its trees harvested to build ships, its land tilled to grow cotton and its beauty used to entertain the powerful and the wealthy.

In 1969 the island was designated a National Seashore and today is mostly unpopulated.

These cold facts of history tell you nothing about the experience of Cumberland Island. I'm not sure prose or poetry can either. The natural beauty of this island borders on the surreal. These photos are my best offering.

Live oak canopy hung with Spanish moss.    ©Tammy Kennon

Palmettos fanning underneath the live oaks.  ©Tammy Kennon

Wild poser.     ©Tammy Kennon

Much of the island is covered by a live oak ceiling.   ©Tammy Kennon

Seemingly endless beach with white powdery sand.

©Tammy Kennon

Dungeness mansion, built in 1803 by Catherine Greene, burned to the ground in the mid-1800s.

Rebuilt by Thomas Carnegie in 1881, it burned again in 1945.

©Tammy Kennon

©Tammy Kennon

Cumberland Island, GA 30º45.924N | 81º28.364W

©Tammy Kennon

©Tammy Kennon