- Southern writer, Tom Poland and nature photographer Robert Clark, take us on a beautiful journey of words and pictures.

Their book Carolina Bays: Wild, Mysterious, and Majestic Landforms , explores the Carolina Bays through over 150 pictures and descriptive prose.

I'm Holly Jackson.

Join us as we bring you powerful stories from both new and established Southern authors as we sit By The River .

♪ upbeat theme music ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] By the River is brought to you in part by The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, Strengthening Community.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB.

The Pat Conroy Literary Center.

- Hi there, it's another beautiful day here at our Lowcountry Studios sitting in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Thanks so much for joining us for By The River .

I'm Holly Jackson, By The River is our love letter to Southern writing.

And we're bringing you powerful stories from throughout the Southeast, both new and established South Carolina and Southern authors.

And we're here today with the authors of Carolina Bays: Wild, Mysterious, and Majestic Landforms, both Tom Poland and Robert Clark.

Thank you both for coming this way.

>> Thank you Driving from the upstate?

>> Columbia.

>> [Holly] From Columbia, and as we were talking beforehand, we mentioned Harold's Country Club, and there's always a few stories about that.

>> Yeah.

>> [Holly] On the way back, you might stop in through there, huh?

>> [Guests] We gonna try to.

>> Pretty cool.

Alright.

Let's get right into talking about the book.

Tell me - so much to talk about with the book but where the idea originated.

>> [Tom] Well, the idea began with a magazine feature that I'd written back in 1982, thereabouts, I actually wrote a script for a film when I was at DNR and that's where I met Robert.

And eventually he came and joined our magazine staff.

So, I had written about the Carolina Bays a lot since then in columns and this magazine feature was picked up by the editor of the press.

He said, I wanna give you a contract to do this book.

And...we started out with one publisher, but we had heard that it wasn't going to be a hard bound full color book, and this is beautiful nature photography.

So we got out of the contract and USC Press picked it up.

That's how the book came to be.

[Holly] You had some standards that you wanted to see make the book and these pictures are incredible.

[Tom] Robert's photography is just amazing.

[Holly] It really is.

>> It deserves to be showcased.

>> [Holly] Yes, yes, I agree.

Talk a little bit about your background as a photographer because these photos are just unreal.

>> [Robert] I started out in photography in the late 70's.

>> [Holly] Okay.

>> [Robert] And I wanted to be an architectural photographer.

And I did a lot of assisting with architectural photographers working in the dark room.

And I spent so many hours in the dark room, that I was going crazy.

So I had to get out in nature and I started camping on the weekends, and photographing my experiences as I was walking and hiking.

And that was a true love that sort of took hold.

And I've been working in nature ever since.

>> With this book in particular, what were some of the highlights as a photographer that stand out to you?

>> The highlights were the unique locations and one of which is a Bay in Francis Marion Forest, where you're walking into the Bay through a scrub pine and - area.

And all over sudden you get into the bay and it's full of pitcher plants as far as you can see, flowers as far as you can see.

And it was just an interesting place that not a lot of South Carolinians are familiar with.

>> It had to be tough to narrow down, which photos - Did you have say-so in which photos made a full page, and which made - >> [Tom] Sort of yes and no.

>> [Holly] Half page, uh-huh.

>> [Tom] We submitted, what 600 and something photographs?

>> [Robert] Yeah, we did the photo editing.

And when you do a book, you overshoot.

If they say give us 200 photos, you give them 400.

>> [Holly] Okay.

>> [Robert] Let them pick what they like.

And we know that we're gonna like it 'cause we turn it in.

>> [Holly] Right.

>> So it's a win-win situation in an area like that.

>> I was shocked but not shocked because I do hear this from authors about how long it took to get here.

Tell me the time frame of when this began and when it ended.

>> Well, the book came out right before COVID hit last year, 2020 and we'd worked on it six and seven years, respectively.

We were both in the field for six years together, three states, probably 30,000 miles of driving, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

...it was just a challenge, to travel all of these places, (clears throat) So we got it done and it all came together but it took six and seven years to get the whole process wrapped up.

>> When you say six and seven years, are you talking about on the weekends you're working or every day or once a month?

>> Toward the end of the book project, when you're putting everything together go to press with it, it gets real intense, and it's full-time work.

So for about a year but full time, I was editing the manuscript and putting together an index, bibliography and other things that they wanted to have and needed to have.

And, of course, proofing, proofing, proofing.

And it just takes that much time.

So we spent six years in the field and a year of, in our own sense post-production from our end of it.

>> [Holly] Right.

>> [Tom] Getting things right.

[Holly] ...I guess you'd call them field trips whenever you're out there doing your research.

How many of those do you, were there?

>> [Tom] Oh gosh!

I don't know.

We went to Valdosta, Georgia which is about what, a nine hour drive?

>> [Robert] Yeah, that's a long drive.

>> Up to North Carolina.

[Holly] Yes, I know exactly where that is.

My grandparents were in Homerville, Georgia.

>> [Tom] Yeah, that covers from Banks Lake near Valdosta.

>> [Holly] Okay.

>> [Tom] So, Georgia is on the cover, which would have pleased my mother, 'cause she always wanted me to do something about Georgia.

She passed away during the book.

But that's Banks Lake that's down near Valdosta.

And, of course, we had to write captions for the photos too.

>> [Holly] Right.

>> [Tom] And we don't just take that lightly.

I try to write a caption that tells something to the reader, that they can learn from that's not always apparent in the photograph, something that's behind the scenes, so it takes time to do that.

>> [Holly] Okay.

>> [Tom] Yeah.

>> We talked about challenges.

You mentioned your mother's death, that wasn't all, you had several challenges throughout this process.

Talk about some of those and how they, you didn't let them become setbacks for the process.

>> Well sometimes the weather wouldn't cooperate with us.

We tried to get a look at the bays throughout the year.

And I liked that about Robert.

He likes to get a seasonal approach to subject matter because it's beautiful at all times of the year, although it's very different.

The biggest challenge really was just getting out there in the field.

Those are inaccessible places.

A lot of people won't dare go in them.

They think it's too wild for them.

And...snakes, of course, is what everybody has on their minds, snakes and alligators.

But the biggest problems I said earlier is, insects, stinging insects, ticks that kind of thing.

[Holly] Any injuries along the way?

>> I got attacked by some wasps, pretty good.

>> [Holly] Oh, man!

>> [Tom] Yeah.

>> [Holly] Now in these places, some of them did you have some kind of tour guide?

Somebody who is familiar with the area?

>> The Savannah River Site, they have 300 Bays in Savannah River site's 310 square miles.

And you can't go in there unescorted.

We have a security clearance there.

We went there, what?

How many times would you say?

>> [Robert] About 10 times.

>> [Tom] Yeah.

And we had two wonderful wetland ecologist guides that would show us around because again, you can't be by yourself.

[Holly] Right.

>> And they would say things like, "Don't photograph that reactor."

[Holly] Oh, yeah.

>> They would take us to some of these marvelous bays, some of which would be covered in water during the rainy season.

Otherwise, dry.

One of which is in the Guinness book of world records, for the longest continuing amphibians study in the world.

That'd be what, Rainbow Bay?

>> [Robert] Rainbow.

>> [Tom] Rainbow Bay.

>> [Holly] Let's talk snakes.

>> [Tom] Copperheads, canebrakes.

Oh, we saw some snakes, moccasins, corn snakes, which are really beautiful.

We never saw an indigo though, did we?

>> No.

I don't know if they would be close to a bay.

>> Yeah.

No way even close we came, to get bitten.

>> [Holly] There was the chance that you might come across a bear one time.

Tell that story.

>> Well, we were at Lewis Ocean Bay.

Robert loves that place.

And it's a huge complex of Bays.

He was photographing Venus flytraps, and our guide, Dr. Jim Luken, left us to go to a meeting.

And the next day when I got back to Columbia, I called him and thanked him for showing us around.

He said, "Did you and Robert see any bears?"

I said, "No, should we?"

He said, "Yes.

It's the thickest concentration of bears in the state, population of 300."

>> [Holly] Wow!

He said, "You can be sure they saw you."

>> [Holly] Oh, my gosh!

>> [Tom] Yeah.

>> Go back through the cameras or the photos, but no sign of the bears.

>> [Tom] No bears.

>> [Holly] Okay, good.

Back up a little, I know you mentioned briefly in the beginning, but just where your meeting took place, the friendship and just kind of the memories you two have made along the way.

I mean, these are just incredible.

>> [Tom laughing] We've got some stories.

We met at South Carolina Wildlife Magazine when Robert was brought in as a photographer for the staff, and I'll add it didn't take him long to get about 80% of the covers because his work is so good.

>> [Holly] Right.

>> We met there and we were just wild and crazy guys as they say, going out for dinners and having a good time.

And we just gravitated together.

We'd never really worked together per se, at South Carolina Wildlife.

>> [Holly] Okay.

>> He would go out in the field and I'd stay in the office and write.

And then when we got out on our own, we both left within a year of each other.

We started doing some collaborations on books, magazine stories.

>> [Holly] Okay.

>> [Robert] I think, our history of books started right as Tom was leaving.

I knew he wasn't satisfied where he was.

And I walked in his office and said, "Let's go take a day trip, you and me."

And we went down Highway 378 and we sort of gravitated toward old tenant homes and barns.

And that turned into a feature.

And as Tom was saying, a publisher saw that and he said, "Let's go talk to these guys," and the rest is history.

>> [Holly] I asked you earlier about whether I should call you a historian and what did you say?

>> [Tom] Blue-collar historian.

[Holly] Okay, and what's that?

>> - the nostalgia, the back roads, and old farms, abandoned cemeteries.

I don't care about legislation changes and tariffs and taxes and all that.

>> [Holly] Right.

>> [Tom] Just great places in the South that deserve to be written about.

>> Well, tell me how you did your research for this book and, I mean, just... >> [Tom] That was tough.

(clears throat) The interesting thing about the Carolina Bays are the theories behind their creation.

There is no one real consensus.

So they remain one of Earth's more mysterious landforms, and some people would say the most mysterious, but they're all oval shaped.

They're parallel with the Northwest to Southeast orientation, Sand rims on the southeastern edge, and this gave rise to a theory by Henry Savage, who was an attorney in Camden that a meteorite bombardment created them.

And he did a book in USC Press in '82 or thereabouts, I think, which we have a photograph of his book in our book in which he wrote about them being created by a meteorite bombardment but that was not true.

There was no evidence to support it.

So what created it?

Some wild theories say nesting whales, back when the ocean had yet to recede.

Dinosaur footprints- There's a bay 5,000 acres down near Valdosta.

If a dinosaur created it, I'd be amazed.

>> [Holly] Yeah.

>> Beaver dams, all kinds of really crazy theories.

But there's one theory called The Oriented Wind and Wave Action Theory by a guy named Raymond Kaczorowski, who did his work at USC, in which he claims that sandy areas over epochs of prevailing winds will get that oval shape and orientation 'cause the winds are coming from a prevailing direction.

[Holly] Okay.

>> In fact there's some rain basins in Nebraska that have the same features.

There's a guy in our book named Michael Davias.

He was very helpful to us.

He gave us the LiDAR images you'll see which are laser images.

And his theory is that an icy comet hit up in Saginaw, Michigan, and spewed out a slurry of ice, water, and sand across the Coastal Plain and into Nebraska.

And he did some plotting of their axes.

And when he corrected for the Coriolis effect, they came together over Saginaw, Michigan, but the bays are different ages.

And so it was a cataclysmic event.

If created all at one time, they'd have the same age.

So the mystery endures.

>> [Holly] Wow, very interesting.

What do you hope that your readers take away from the book?

>> [Robert] I hope that they discover a unique aspect of South Carolina nature, and the bays extend from Delaware down to Northern Florida.

And as a photographer, I'm always out and about trying to see the next beautiful photograph and I'll be in a spot and the people around me are all looking at their phones.

And I always wonder don't they want to see this beautiful sunset ahead of them?

But we hope that people will be more knowledgeable about the bays and always in the back of our mind was the hope that this project would protect the bays because most of them are private ownership very few are public lands.

We do have a state park, Woods Bay State Park that has enabled the public to see what a Carolina Bay can be but they do need protection.

They're so unique that it would be a shame if they were all developed or farmed over.

So we hope that comes out of this project.

>> [Tom] Yeah.

>> The goal for me was just to let them know they exist.

I do a lot of presentations and talks around the state and Georgia also.

If I've got 50 people in the room, maybe two had heard of them.

[Holly] Oh wow!

>> Then of course, the name which I wrote about the book is an unfortunate choice it came way back in 1760s.

They're called Carolina Bays because the biggest and the best examples of them are in the two Carolinas.

They're called Bays has nothing to do with water.

It's got everything to do with Bay tree species, Red Bay, Laurel Bay, and so forth.

They were named because they had such an abundance of those plants in them, by a gentleman, his name escapes me at the moment.

What would have been a better name?

I don't have an option but most people don't even know they exist.

And I tell them, you drive by them and you'll see one, you'll think...they'll see the Pond Cypress Swamp and say, "Oh, it's a swamp."

I say, "When you fly over it."

which I have, you'll see it's oval shape and pointing in a direction, parallel to all of its kinfolk bays.

So I just wanna know they exist and they treasure them.

The beautiful thing about a bay that's been disturbed, drained, timbered, ditched, and all that, is if you leave it alone, plug it up, let the rains re-accumulate over the years and years it'll re-establish itself.

[Holly] Oh, okay.

>> It'll go back to being a bay, which is rich, rich pockets of habitat for a lot of different species, orchids, amphibians, dear, bear, Venus flytraps.

I always refer to it as sort of like a garden of Eden.

They're beautiful to see.

>> [Holly] Right.

You mentioned that this all wrapped up and then COVID was waiting on you.

>> [Tom] That's right.

[Holly] How did that, I mean, that was just another challenge along the way I imagine, What did that mean for you?

>> A year or so before COVID I did 97 book talks in one year, that was almost two a week.

>> [Holly] Okay.

>> 2020, I think I did eight.

And a lot of those were Zooms.

>> [Holly] Right.

>> Zoom events you don't get to put a book in somebody's hands and say, here, I show them the photographs, but you don't get to meet the public and talk about the Bays, like we're doing now.

>> So have you tried to make up for that now, now that people are getting back face to face?

>> I had seven events booked in the last week.

[Holly] Great, okay.

What is your target audience, who do you go to?

>> Anybody that wants to listen to me talk.

>> Okay.

>> We do a lot of museums, libraries, civic groups, Daughters of American Revolution, US Daughters of 1812, people like that.

>> [Holly] Okay.

So let's talk about what's next.

What are some of your other joint interests that you might collaborate on?

>> Well, Robert has branched into the writing world somewhat and I've branched into the photography world.

I call myself an amateur, he inspired me.

We were talking, coming down the road today about the cemeteries along Highway 21.

I like these old back road type places.

[Holly] Right.

>> 'Cause don't get on the interstate.

You won't see a thing, but the back roads are really beautiful places with a lot of what I call blue collar history.

Churches that have been abandoned, old homes that are shuttered.

And there's always a story behind that.

Why, why is it so?

We stopped and looked at an old church today, two churches in Branchville, on Double Church Road.

Yeah, so I'm sure I'll be back to see that.

>> Well, whenever I mentioned that I was from Bishopville you started giving off a couple of facts.

I imagine you do the same whenever people tell what, rural area they might be from.

How do you know all these things?

Are you constantly reading South Carolina history?

>> I write a column every week for as many as 20, 30, 40, 50 newspapers depending on how many will pick it up in Georgia and South Carolina and my hobby on weekends and even during the weekday is to get my camera and go into the back roads of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and look for places where I can get lost to see what's really down a road that nobody knows about.

And it gives me great stories and so as a result, I know a lot of stuff now.

>> [Holly] Right.

You know, somebody said, "Have you ever been?"

I said, "Yeah, I got pictures of it."

>> [Holly] Yeah, pretty cool.

[Tom] Yeah.

>> Okay, so from a professional photographer, for those of us who are wannabes, what are a couple little tips you could give us all.

>> Get a tripod, get a polarizing filter.

Those two items will improve your photography 90% [Holly] Okay.

>> and learn and study light.

If you look at something and it's has beautiful light, look around and see what caused it.

And then you know the next time those clouds go over the sun, you can go back to that beautiful light that you saw two weeks ago.

And if you put those experiences in your mind, they'll always recur again.

And you just use that experience to improve your photography and lighting is the key.

>> Fantastic advice.

And as a writer, what would you tell those who are just starting out writing?

>> I get approached by a lot of people that wanna do a book [Holly] Okay.

>> [Tom] I always give the same advice.

I said, "You should have started yesterday," because it's time consuming.

And I said, "You better like being alone too" because you got to spend a lot of time sitting at a computer.

Some people still use typewriters, but a computer, and writing is something really, that's a tough skill to develop.

It takes a long time, a lot of experience.

>> I imagine on these trips, you've got a pen and paper out there with you, taking your notes or... >> [Tom] I do take a notepad.

I do, sure do.

And a lot of times if something is really vivid and it strikes me I won't forget it.

>> Right.

>> Yeah, I'd like to say while we're here in Beaufort that Warren Schlesinger retired here, he was the Acquisition Editor of USC Press that discovered me and Robert.

[Holly] Oh, okay.

>> We had done that tenant home store and he called us up and he said, "I want to meet you guys, take you to lunch at the Carolina Inn.

[Holly] Okay.

>> Because if you've got more stories like your tenant home story, I'm going to give you a book contract."

And that's how it happened.

>> [Holly] Wow, pretty cool.

>> So Beaufort is a special place for y'all.

>> [Tom] It is.

>> All right, very good.

One more question and this is one that I have asked this season.

It just happened to be one that has done real well, we're talking about teachers.

In the past we've had a whole lot of students here working on the show.

COVID's changed that up just a little bit.

And so this year we're talking about how teachers have influenced us along the way.

Do you have any in mind that maybe gave you a boost of encouragement, some good advice that you could remember from your childhood or a mentor along the way.

>> I had great English teachers in my hometown of Lincolnton, Georgia, which is kind of interesting because it's very small, but for some reason, fate coincidence, what might you call it?

I had three great teachers there that really got my interest going in composition, writing and literature.

and University of Georgia had a professor named Jim Kilgo who was from Darlington.

And Jim was a tremendous writer and a wonderful teacher.

He did a book called Deep Enough Ivory Bills.

And he passed away a good many years ago, but he was a tremendous influence on me I never forgot his presence.

He had a presence about him.

>> [Holly] It's funny how you can still remember these people and they almost talk to you in your head sometimes when you're going - >> He's still alive as far as I'm concerned.

>> [Holly] I know what you mean.

How about you?

>> I think in my profession, I went to photography school for two years.

Thought I knew a lot, got out went to work for professional photographers, and learned more in two weeks working for them than I did in two years of school.

And I would tell folks who are interested in photography that would want to become professionals, go to work for a professional photographer in your area.

Just learn what you can.

Soak it all up.

You're gonna carry a lot of bags.

You're gonna do a lot of grunt work, but watch how they work, watch how they make a living, learn how to bill people, learn how to negotiate.

And to me, those are the best teachers that you can get in photography.

>> [Holly] That field work, there's nothing like it.

Time is up already.

It's been a great conversation.

Thank you so much for coming by.

>> [Tom] Thank you.

>> [Holly] And I just love that Beaufort is such a special place for you two.

Everybody, thank you for joining us for By The River .

I'm Holly Jackson.

We appreciate you tag along with us.

We're gonna leave you now with our Lowcountry Poets Corner.

We'll see you next time By The River .

♪ funky music ♪ Inheritance is the incorrect word for the righteous pulse that stutters when I learn of this history.

How the story spills teeth on asphalt.

Each document in the fruit archive is a red soaked landscape a forget compass leaving bruises on the map.

Under every map, a new map secret as joy and ancient as erosion marble faces with age busted visage like stolen territory etched with opulent monuments to a forgotten resistance.

I find two brilliant pebbles speckled with blood.

Evidence that someone once was alive carving desires into stone.

Stone shelves worn chipped like a brick thrown back.

In the fruit archive the water rises.

Brief flood, swelling tomes into indecipherable violence.

River urgent end of a heterosexual reign.

Rain seeps through the ceiling of the fruit archive.

Riot of seeds splitting open easy as a skull.

And here, even drowning in what is never said aloud, I find a worthy inheritance.

♪ upbeat theme music ♪ ♪ [Announcer] By The River is brought to you in part by The ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, Strengthening Community.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB.

The Pat Conroy Literary Center.