Going "Beyond the Grave" with Charleston Historian and Author Ruth Miller

"Touring the Tombstones" with Ruth Miller

Have you heard the one about the busload of morticians?

No joke, it was this twist of fate that began to turn tour guide Ruth Miller into a taphophile- a person with a grave interest in graveyards.

Years ago, Miller took a group of visiting undertakers on a Charleston tour when they asked her to stop at a church graveyard. She complied and ended up learning so many interesting things from the morticians that she was driven to dig more into Charleston’s many churchyards.

Hurricane Dorian: Good Riddance!

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019 was D Day- Dorian Day. This was the day Hurricane Dorian finally closed in on the Charleston area after several days of anticipation. In the wee hours Category 3 wind gusts commenced an assault that would last more than 12 hours.

Our power went off at 5:40 a.m. and returned 20 minutes later. Maybe this won’t be so bad, I thought at that time. But at 8 a.m. the electricity went off again. And off it would remain for 26 hours until 10 yesterday morning.

All Aces in the ACE Basin

One of the many great things about the ACE Basin is that its state and federal nature refuges are almost always open to the intrepid visitor willing to travel to what some may consider the middle of nowhere.

Taken when I arrived (before getting all hot and sweaty)

It had been several months since I trekked to one of the basin’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs ). I found some free time one day recently and with the prospect of soon having to deal with another hurricane (Dorian), I grabbed my camera and bug spray and headed south on Highway 17 to the Hollings National Wildlife Refuge. It’s about an hour drive from my house.