Perspicacious editor of Sandlapper Magazine for over two decades and my great friend Aïda Rogers introduced me to Roger Pinckney, as she has all of the best things about South Carolina. We took the ferry from Hilton Head and met with Roger in March for an article I wrote about him for the autumn issue of the magazine.
Gruff, Southern, handy with guns: Pinckney seems an unlikely environmentalist. Maybe it's time to ditch the stereotype.
Woven through all of the beauty and banter of his prose in three books of essays, a screenplay and novel, is Roger Pinckney's deep commitment to preserving Daufuskie Island. He'd like to see it the way it was before the oysters died and the Gullah rivermen had to leave for other jobs of work. Before the development boom in the 1980's that sought to make Daufuskie the Martha's Vineyard of the South. Before acres were uprooted to build golf courses and gated communities, and swampland was drained to create condos.
When the moon had to compete with floodlights, and leatherback sea turtles headed landward on what they thought was their age-old path to the sea, Pinckney got mad, got naked, and got busy. He sees Daufuskie as it is, still enchanting and wild in places, and he means to keep it that way. If you didn't know about all that, or about the no money root and Dr. Buzzard and the bald eagles that finally stopped the builders, then you haven't read Roger Pinckney. And if you haven't read Roger Pinckney, then there are some who'll say you'll never know Daufuskie Island. And that would be a damn shame.
