2-5 November 2025

Last week I made my first visit to Hilton Head, where my college suitemate Karen, with Pete, my acting teacher and Karen’s late husband of 50+ years, often spent their holidays.  My trip began smoothly enough with another first, a chauffeured drive to Logan airport and a non-stop flight to Savannah.

There at the SAV baggage claim I met up with Karen, her bereavement still sadly raw, just arrived from her home in Chattanooga, and in an absurdly large Chrysler Pacifica  (the Manager’s Special) drove to Karen and Pete’s gated getaway within the Marriott Monarch complex on Hilton Head.  Located inside yet another gated community, Sea Pines makes up the southern “toe” of the foot-shaped island, where rigorously enforced HOA restrictions ensure a pleasingly tasteful uniformity of custom architecture and a color palette complementing the island’s natural beauty.  Even the McDonald’s blends right in; no garish golden arches here.  Our handsome two-bedroom, two-bathroom villa is lovely, but given it was the first day of the dreary return to Eastern Standard Time, we were barely able to check in, drop our luggage, and scamper to the Coast restaurant next door before the sun set to enjoy a cocktail and light dinner of tortilla soup, crab cake, and salad at a combo firepit/table whose warmth was welcome in November, even 11 degrees of latitude further south from my New Hampshire home.  I augmented my cocktail cognizance by observing Karen enjoying a mango margarita with a Grand Marnier “floater,” a vacation in a glass.  After supper, reruns of The Diplomat, conjured by my fortunately remembering how to log on to my Netflix account, put us happily to bed.

Still on ATT (Anxious Travel Time), I woke early the next morning from a nightmare about an imagined English Department faux pas (I recall my dad saying when he dreamed of his work life he was “always in trouble”).  But the serene beauty of the tastefully landscaped Monarch quickly dispelled the dream hangover, and while Karen slept, I made my way through the carefully landscaped courtyard, speaking along the way to a woman memorizing the names of butterflies displayed on a helpful sign the better to impress her soon-to-be visiting granddaughter.

The beach at Sea Pines is broad and beautiful, the sand as fine and white as that of my hometown St. Pete, and, like that beach of my youth, adorned with sea oats.

After a quick stroll, I returned to the villa to find my friend ready for the breakfast I suggested we enjoy at the Harbour Town Bakery, located under a live oak like all others on the island dripping with Spanish Moss (“neither Spanish nor moss”) inside the former lighthouse keeper’s cottage (1880), the perfect venue for an avocado toast and very well-heeled company. 

The day was perfect, so we took strolled to the nearby Hilton Head lighthouse, its octagonal tower privately built from 1969-70, aiding navigation to a marina predictably full of handsome crafts.

As my dad questioned every time we walked by the marina in St. Pete, “Where do these people get all this money??!!  Adjacent shops clearly profited from plenty of discretionary spending (no cash, only credit):  lots of nautical leisure wear and appealing tchotchkes, as well as more than one pedigreed, though artificial pooch, abound.  The rich ARE different. 

From there we drove to the nearby Stoney-Baynard ruins.  Originally built by Revolutionary War hero Cpt. Jack Stoney in 1793 of tabby plastered over and scored to resemble masonry, and later acquired by William Baynard in 1840, perhaps as a result of Cpt. Stoney’s bad poker hand, the Baynard house was once a grand antebellum plantation overlooking the Calibogue Sound.  When Union forces invaded Hilton Head Island in 1861, the Baynards evacuated the property; the residence was raided and served as Union headquarters before being burned.  The distance from the main house to the kitchen and slave quarters intimates the suffering that war was meant to address.  Given the division that currently roils our country, gazing at the romantic ruins brings “Ozymandias” to mind:  “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

Heading back to the Monarch, we made some provisioning stops, first at a gorgeous Fresh Market, where an elderly woman at the coffee bean grinding station wondered aloud if Fresh Market would mind if she ground her own beans there, a dilemma of privilege I nevertheless understood:  one might thriftily travel with one’s own coffee beans, but who travels with a grinder?  At the CVS, I spotted the first Black face I’d seen since arriving on the Island:  Black Santa, accompanied by Mrs. Black Claus.  What might the Stoney-Baynard slaves make of THAT, I wondered?

But a lovely dinner awaited me that night:  Karen treated me to the chef’s table at the Smith’s favorite restaurant, The Sage Room, where Chef Martini and colleagues delighted us with excellent Chilean sea bass and almond crusted tuna, preceded by a witty, delicious, and CHEAP (at $2!) appetizer:  the Snow Pea Martini with pineapple soy reduction and Dijon aioli.

After another nightcap of The Diplomat reruns, we went to bed happy.

The next morning we had breakfast on our porch of inviting prospect, and then set out for the Shelter Cove sculpture trail, an alluring boardwalk augmented with art and poetry that runs along Broad Creek, with informative signs about flora and fauna, decorative purple Muhly grass (Muhlenbergia sericea), and fine views of marsh grass (Spartina alterniflora) burnished by autumn, the liminal territory so important to the coast, providing critical habitats and food for wildlife, filtering and cleaning the brackish water, and protecting the coastline from storms and erosion, the grassland ecosystem that gives Savannah its name.

There’s a fine Veteran’s Memorial at the end of the trail, and two handsome apartment complexes, WaterWalk at Shelter Cove, overlooking the well-maintained path and the creek beyond.

We took advantage of proximity to take a tour of WaterWalk, including a sumptuously decorated beach-themed apartment, with appropriately high-end swag available:  small free bottles of prosecco, cork screws, bottle insulators, and tote bags.  Lovely to think of living there, though the width of the hallways (and the age of the well-heeled residents) were reminiscent of assisted living facilities, and the monthly rent of $3500 + utilities only confirms the dearth of affordable housing—not just on the island, but across the nation.  (My Greensboro friend subsequently confirmed that $2300-$3500/ month is the going rate for apartments in her North Carolina neighborhood.)  But what does one expect where the public bathrooms include sunscreen dispensers?

From WaterWalk we made our way to SurfWatch, another Marriott property where Karen and Pete have stayed, this one at the northern heel of Hilton Head.  SurfWatch boasts more appealing boardwalks and Spartina, the natural world beautifully integrated into the complex, with an inviting beach-side pool flanked by private cabanas and another gorgeously wide beach.

We stopped at the beach bar for a snack of pita, spreads, and an uplifting margarita, and then, as the sun dipped, made our way to Mitchelville, founded by the formerly enslaved, and the first self-governing town for African Americans in the U.S.  The beach was handsome here, but wilder (as the sign warned), and the beach-side accommodations more modest.

We ran out of light before we could see the town, but enjoyed a very tasty pizza dinner at Michael Anthony’s pizzeria market café before returning to the solace of our beautiful villa and more Diplomat reruns.

I packed up that night, and next morning after breakfast, made my way back to the Savannah airport to return the behemoth Chrysler Pacifica, musing all the while about the 51 years since Karen, as Cecily Cardew, and I, as Lady Bracknell, acted together in Furman’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest—some of the most fun ever, that play.

Our lives certainly diverged after graduation, but this reunion of two now-widowed old friends was just as certainly tonic for me, and I hope for my beautiful, grieving friend.