First Day of Summer … Shrimping in South Carolina | Bearing Drift

It’s the first day of summer on the calendar but we all know summer began as soon as school was out.

As I looked at today’s date on this sunny and warm day in the Shenandoah Valley, my mind drifted back to another first day of summer when my husband and I, along with our 16-month-old son, had driven to Charleston, S.C., to visit Virginia friends who were living there at the time.

On that first day of summer we started our day early, piling into our friend’s boat to explore Charleston Harbor and visit historical Fort Sumter on a small piece of land in the Atlantic Ocean. We spent the morning walking its pathways, exploring fortifications, and satisfying my inner history nerd by taking in the stories of the past.

Keeping an eye on the time, we left Fort Sumter and pointed the boat toward the South Carolina coastline, making our way into one of the delta inlets for some shrimping, a great pastime for our friends, and something that was about to become a new experience for us. It was time for the tide to go out so we needed to be in place.

We found a nice spot with no one around and anchored the boat to wait in the summer heat and humidity for the tide to go out as the sun baked down on us. The next few hours were spent slathering suntan lotion on to fend off the sun’s rays, picnicking on deck, swimming with our little boy in his life jacket, and waiting for the water to recede as the time for low tide approached.

The age-old delta flats have canals tunneling through them, channels where the water rushes out with low tide … and that is where we turned our attention. Jumping overboard with nets in hand, we stretched them across those channels to block escape and catch the shrimp that were being dragged out to sea by the tide.

Shrimp were plentiful and it didn’t take long to quickly load our nets, empty them into five-gallon buckets on deck, and repeat as we eventually hauled in enough shrimp to fill all the buckets. With the boat’s hull resting on the muddy flat, we had plenty of time to wait until the tide slowly returned to once again float us. During that time, under the broiling sun, we removed shrimp heads before icing them down for the ride back to dock.

The experience made an impression on me because we commented several times throughout the day that it was the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, and it was very hot on the salt water — mid 90s with no breeze. Thank goodness for all that water to cool off with frequent dips overboard.

It was a memorable event that I recalled yet again today on our first day of summer in the mountains of western Virginia where the forecast is calling for a hot week with temps in the upper 80s. Both memories, today and the day shrimping years ago in Charleston, are keepers.

Happy summer!