Carolina tales: Lilies of the stream
There’s a land nearby, between the lakes (Wylie and Wateree). It’s close in proximity, but distant in time – The Landsford Canal State Park, home to the rare and endangered Shoals Spider Lilies.
It looks close - just below Rock Hill, but the roads are not well marked - perhaps a good thing, because it isn’t clear how much love the plants could endure. You turn east on Highway 21 (well right now you turn left at the homemade sign that says squash for sale at a nearby farm.) At the park headquarters you find the trail heads that lead to the rocky shoal that is home to the lilies. The big bloom takes place between mid-May and mid-June. So you might mark your calendars for next year.
The park land’s developed history goes back to the early 1800s when slaves were used to help build a canal that bypassed the rocky shoals. The arrival of railroads ended use of the canal to bring cargo up the Catawba, but remnants of the locks can still be seen on site.
On a hike in early June with some church friends, we came upon a man with binoculars. He wasn’t looking out across the water at the lilies. He was looking up into the trees, having followed a family of eagles, and on this day he believed the fledglings had flown, leaving the parents behind.
At the park entrance we came upon a family of wild turkeys, the kind the Pilgrims first found in America.
With urbanization pushing ever outward from Charlotte, it’s reassuring that some vestiges of the past remain, places where you can’t hear the traffic and where you might chance upon a rare species of plant or animal.
Ken Sanford has lived in River Hills for 14 years and is a North Carolina native. In high school, he camped in the Smokies near Cherokee and was bitten so badly by black flies, his face swelled and he had to hitchhike into town to get ointment.
This story was originally published June 27, 2016 at 1:29 PM with the headline "Carolina tales: Lilies of the stream."