“[T]his issue is about southern water, the vital fluid that shapes its land, contours, and boundaries, brings it life, and makes it livable. An early traveler to Carolina called it a “watry Country,” and so it remains, its liquid and solid selves each depending on the other and each indispensable in giving place its character.”

As a landlubber, I usually think of the South as solid ground. It’s the Land of Cotton. The place where roots grow. Mountains and Piedmont. It’s only when we get to the Tidewater or Low country that the companion elements earth and water mingle enough to change my mental picture of the South’s composition perceptibly.