We are walking towards the sun, into a strong wind, waves tumbling to the left, groyne ahead. Silhouetted darkly in the distance, coming closer, is a small herd of horses-and-riders They turn inland, walking along the groyne until it sinks into sand. The wind blows sand in a smoky waterfall over the groyne, the tails and manes swirl the same direction.
Further up the beach two more horses and their riders come towards me, wading in the surf. I take a long distance picture and another as they pass me, trying to show the white tumble of surf against the legs. The woman in the cowboy hat lifts a hand and smiles.
We continue to walk into the wind. The goal is to reach the great windfall of sun-bleached, wave-scoured trees lying flat with flat walls of roots entwining vertically at the end of the fallen trunk. Snags reach upward, providing perches for the sea birds. It’s a graveyard of wood and water and wind. But today it is cold and windy (Why did I wear shorts? Why didn’t I bring a hat?) We turn around after 30 minutes and make our way back. With the wind at our back now, the way seems shorter, walking easier.
Towards the end of the walk, we meet the pair of riders coming back. “Can you send me the pix you took? I have plenty of her, but none of me.” I get her number and text a picture then and there…”I’ll have horses available tomorrow if you want to ride.” If only L or N were here: they’d like that. 
I like horses in the abstract, and sometimes I can even stroke their noses, but I’ve only ridden them a few times. Once when I was in grade school we went to a riding stable. I was led out and left in a field. My horse promptly turned around. L came jogging past on her horse, saying “You’re going where I’m going.” “Where’s that?” “Back to the stable.” Right, so I had no authority.
Fast forward several years: I was working in the Library HR office, and T, head of Children’s Services, had an office behind me. She owned a show horse named Showtime, and one weekend we drove out to the stable where she did some training. I was put on Showtime for the cooldown walk around the training ground. He was a very large, very tall horse. I was not comfortable.
As we drove back towards home from Hunting Island, E asked if this would be a good time to look at the Praise Houses. There are three on St Helena Island, leftovers from the days when slaves were not allowed to congregate in large groups or attend the white man’s churches. They are tended and maybe even used? At any rate, they are opened for special events.
It was a pretty afternoon, albeit a bit late by the time we turned down Coffin Point Rd (we’d waited to sign for a wine delivery so didn’t reach the beach until almost 3:30). Still the slanting light was pretty. We missed the Praise House on the drive in and continued down the Avenue of the Oaks until it dead-ended at the plantation house. Sometime I’ll have to come back and check out the beaches to right or left. But meanwhile we drove back through the tunnel of live oaks, the hanging Spanish Moss glowing golden in the late afternoon light.
This time we saw a tiny little white house on the right side of the road, fairly close to the main highway we’d turned off. The praise house sat quietly in a small plot of trodden dirt which was covered in thick live oak leaves. Plot and house were enclosed by a half-circle of woods. The area was small, the building itself no bigger than a tool shed.
The door at the top of the 3 shallow steps was padlocked, but we could look into the windows. There were four windows, one on each side of the door, one in each side wall, 2/3 of the way to the back wall, which was blank and empty of adornment. Blended into the iron bars of the side windows we could see openwork iron crosses, the only real sign that this was a religious place. A podium on a shallow platform faced the door and 6 wooden benches, 3 to a side. Narrow waist-high shelves stood against each wall. There was no altar, but what appeared to be a Bible was propped open in a cubby behind the podium. A sign on the front of the podium said “Welcome!” I thought of how noisy it would have been when it was in use, people crowded into the tiny house, singing praises. Now all was still.
