Ancient Oaks & New Beginnings: When the right people show up

Last week’s episode on-location with a ‘community juggernaut’ restoration project in South Carolina drew some wonderful responses – like ‘I felt like I was right there’, ‘Giving me goose bumps’, ‘The future retrospective documentary idea is brilliant’, and ‘This kicks ass’! So here’s a 5 minute bonus to lift your spirits a little more. 

It starts as we were winding up, but with mic’s left running, capturing a stunning moment by an old oak tree standing on the original plantation house grounds. (And the Angel Oak Joel mentions, is an even older oak he just filmed a story for, to assist in its preservation and celebration.) 

Then another stunning moment, when Schuyler Clogston drifted by, and the tale emerged of her serendipitous encounter with the Project. And finally, some more context to the amazing regeneration at play, and the out-take at the end of the main episode.

If you’ve come here first, you can tune into that main episode 256 with Joel Caldwell and Dr Blake Scott, ‘The Marsh Appreciation & Restoration Society for Happiness’. You’ll find a few links in the show notes as usual, along with transcript, and a bunch of photos on that episode website, with more for paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded September 2024.

Title image: the oak tree we pass (pic: Anthony James). 

Music:

By Jeremiah Johnson.

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Pre-roll music: Heartland Rebel, by Steven Beddall (sourced from Artlist).

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Episode Transcript

Blake (00:00):
Do you want this thing?
back, or are you still going?

AJ (00:02):
Well, I just sort of keep it running, because you never know
what happens.

Blake (00:05):
Okay, yeah, you just edit it down If we're together, I'll
keep it running, yeah whateveryou want.

AJ (00:09):
Unless you guys want it off and you want to talk about stuff
.

Blake (00:11):
No, I don't care yeah cool.
This is the original plantationhouse, lowndes Grove, so this
wall is the current propertyboundary, but the whole
neighborhood was the plantation.
wow, check out this oak, yeahthis southern live oak.
Yeah, this is like the specimen, that's like pre-revolutionary,

(00:31):
a couple hundred years at least.

Joel (00:34):
Oh yeah, I would say north of that.
Grandmother oak here.

AJ (00:41):
It's magnificent yeah, yeah, it's awesome yeah, has its own
story too, though.
Oh my gosh, how old do youthink?

Joel (00:52):
Oh, I mean, that thing's got to be like 400 or something.
I mean, I have no idea and it'sreally hard to tell with those.
I think even like the angel oak.

Blake (00:58):
Yeah, sometimes they're like it's 1,000 years.
Yeah, no, it could be, thoughit could be the angel oak.

Joel (01:03):
They think it's somewhere between like 400 and 1,000 years
old.
That's a big, but it's justhard to, without cutting it down
, I guess, or damaging it insome way.
You can't really tell yeah, sonot worth it.
Hey, I want to introduce you toone of our friends.

Blake (01:20):
She's a professor at Clemson.
Helping us design theecological corridor.
She's got a couple of classes.
If you've got time go visittheir studio.

AJ (01:28):
Magnificent.
What's your name?

Schuyler (01:30):
Schuyler Clogston.
And the group that just sort ofdispersed are my students.
But this is our second semesterworking to design the
ecological corridor, so theyjust finished up sort of a
neighborhood study and analysisand they did case studies and
precedents to break downecological corridors into
specific elements like bioswales, water retention ponds, native
plants, um tree canopy coverage,things like that in urban areas

(01:52):
, um, and then coming up here ina couple weeks we're going to
do a community design charrettewith, in partnership with the
city, to get community feedbackon what they'd want the corridor
to look like and then we'll getto designing pretty soon.

Joel (02:04):
so yeah, I think sky is the best example of like the
community just offering exactlywhat we need at the time.
We're like, we're like howabout this, uh, ecological
corridor idea?
And blake, the designerliterally takes like a google,
like a google earth image of thecharleston peninsula and draws
a yellow rectangle over where wewant to do the ecological

(02:25):
corridor.
And then Skye's like I'll takeit from here, thanks.
And she just like gets herstudents to like come up with
all these brilliant ideas of howdifferent areas can be you know
that are just like layingabandoned, how they can be more
productive.
And you, I mean it's just been,it's been so weird, just like
in awe of and don't feel anyownership of this, know, but
just feel like yeah, wow, peopleare just running with this and

(02:45):
now the city's interested andlike I don't know, it's just
been, it's just been really hard.

AJ (02:49):
What you just said about the right person, the right moment
yeah, this happens everywhere soI have 200 plus episodes in now
of this podcast.
This happens everywhere.
Yeah, it's, it's beyond whereyou could possibly think lucky.

Joel (03:05):
Yeah.

AJ (03:06):
This is the way life works.
It's cool when you get stuck inon the ground.
Yep, in your hood, this is howit works.
It's pretty cool.
It's so cool To know you've gotnature at your back or life as
a whole at your back like that.
It's like just keep going andthe sky's going to turn up.

Joel (03:21):
Right.
The sky's the limit.
The sky's the limit.
Have you heard that a milliontimes?
I won't do it again.
I promise.
Man.
There's a monarch in the sun,it's like.
Yes.
Just getting some solarradiation.
We had, like a butterfly,Hailey neither Haley and I had
ever seen a zebra, something orother.

(03:41):
zebra swallow tail?
It wasn't the zebra swallow tail, but it was like it
had.
Like I can't even do it justice, I should just look up a photo
of it.

Community member (03:48):
Was it like wide with like this.

Joel (03:49):
Yeah, and it had like these lines on it.

Community member (03:51):
It was crazy yeah we were out the other
afternoon A friend came by andstopped and like three types of
wasps, five types of bees, ahummingbird, two types of
butterflies and like five typesof moth butterflies and like
five types of moth, in like 15seconds.

Joel (04:08):
You should talk to this guy that's doing the podcast.
He's over there with Hailey andhe has this podcast called
regen narration.
Cool, he's from perth, um, butthey've been traveling around
the united states forthose are like authentic
australians yeah, yeah, none ofthis fucking brisbane, sydney,
east coast, bullshit yeah, yeah,yeah, yeah, you Just from Perth
.
Yeah, you're like Mad Max.
Yeah exactly.