Cumberland Island: Go wild

The armadillos started arriving around dinnertime, stumbling on our camp- site seemingly by accident. Hairy, nearsighted, football-shaped, they were completely oblivious to our existence for a full minute until, sensing us, they reared up and galloped off into the underbrush.

It isn’t known how the official state mammal of Texas arrived on Cumberland Island — a desolate, 18-mile-long barrier island off southern Georgia. One theory is that they floated over from the mainland like so many beach balls lost at sea. They are among the ragtag of nonnative horses, hogs and exotic plants scattered throughout this nearly 20,000-acre island. Cumberland Island is not quite pristine wilderness, but given the options, it is wild enough. It is, after all, one of the last places in the country where you can maroon yourself on a big, wild, almost deserted barrier island.

Of the world’s 400 or so barrier islands — long, narrow ridges of sand, often running parallel to the mainland, built up, beaten down and constantly altered by the force of winds and waves — 20% are found off the U.S. Most are along the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast.

Palm Beach, Fla., may be the country’s wealthiest barrier island. South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island may contain the most golf courses. Padre Island, Texas — at 110 miles — is the longest undeveloped barrier island in the world. And then there is Cumberland, arguably the wildest barrier island in the Lower 48. It contains the largest federally designated wilderness area on a barrier island in the contiguous U.S. You can’t build a road, put up a power line or operate a motorized vehicle in a wilderness area without a permit.

There are no stores, no paved roads and no bridge connecting Cumberland to the mainland, about seven miles away. Only about 300 visitors are allowed on the island during the day.

To get here, you must take a private boat; land a small plane on a grassy, horse-filled strip; or hop a ferry for a 45-minute ride. Or you can arrive as we did, by sliding into a kayak for a few hours of paddling through a salt marsh, taking into account tides and headwinds, with all our gear and food in tow.

Once here, overnight accommodations are limited. There are 16 rooms at the Greyfield Inn, the only commercial operation on the island. There’s also the Park Service-run Sea Camp, with 16 primitive campsites and four backcountry camping sites.

Cumberland Island has the kind of natural beauty that has launched a thousand bulldozers on islands up and down the Eastern coastline. But keeping it that way hasn’t been easy — and it appears that changes are afoot. Legislative wrangling at the end of 2004 reduced the size of the wilderness area by about 200 acres, which means that motorized tours may be running through what was once wilderness.

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Paddling out

We began our journey shortly before noon in the sleepy coastal fishing town of St. Marys, Ga., 30 miles north of Jacksonville, Fla. Pastel-colored Victorian houses lined a boulevard leading to the water. Spanish moss dangled from the trees. A restaurant touted a menu that included gator tail. We joined the line next to a brown wooden sign that read Cumberland Island National Seashore.

Backpacks were strewn beside a walkway leading to a pedestrian ferry, a maroon-and-white vessel known as the Cumberland Queen. To the left of it was a small fleet of shrimp boats. To the right was the launch ramp we used — Cullon Hooks, RJ Wamsley and I — three intermediate paddlers who had never attempted to stuff all the food, clothing and shelter needed for three days of camping inside the narrow confines of a sea kayak.

After carrying our boats to the water’s edge, we slid into our cockpits and paddled off, following a winding passageway rimmed with tall grass.

We glided across calm water for two hours before the island came into view. Waves washed over the bows of our kayaks as we carefully crossed a small shipping lane, reaching the shallows of the island. Stingrays leaped from the water as we passed a small tidal creek; horses grazed along the banks. Fiddler crabs scurried sideways into pea-sized holes as we dragged our kayaks ashore.

Stashing our boats behind a ranger station, we unloaded our gear into pushcarts. We walked along a trail to Sea Camp beneath gargantuan live oaks dripping laundry loads of Spanish moss.

After we pitched our tents, we built a fire, boiled and ate a batch of shrimp we’d brought with us and watched and listened as raccoons, opossums and armadillos scurried about our camp-site.

Cumberland’s return to a wilderness state is relatively recent. The Spanish arrived on the island in the 16th century, followed by the English in 1736. Near the end of the 18th century, the family of Nathaniel Greene, a Revolutionary War hero, established a cotton plantation called Dungeness. Much of the land was cleared for farming, and old-growth live oaks were harvested for ships’ timbers.

In 1881, the Carnegie family (Thomas — brother of steel magnate Andrew — and his wife, Lucy) purchased most of the land on the island and built a turreted mansion on the foundation of the earlier Dungeness house. It was so big that ship captains used it to navigate by. Eventually, the estate included four other mansions, along with a barbershop, a beauty parlor, squash courts, an indoor swimming pool, a billiard room and accommodations for hundreds of employees. Orchards produced oranges, olives, pears, apricots, Japanese plums and figs. There were grapevines and banana plants and ornamental shrubs such as clematis and freesia. Wild game was brought from the mainland for hunting.

Ultimately, disputes over the estate’s game led to its demise. By the 1950s, poaching by other islanders had become a problem. The estate’s caretaker — the family had stopped living there a couple of decades earlier — came across trespassers and decided to fire on them. About a week later, five holes were found in the Carnegies’ sinking boat. Soon after, Dungeness mansion burned.

In the 1970s, the National Park Service began acquiring land on Cumberland, turning it into a national seashore. Mother Nature has done the rest. About 40% of the island is now maritime forest. Live oaks reign supreme, with lush, green saw palmettos and thick muscadine vines draped everywhere. About 200 wild horses, 100 alligators and countless armadillos scurry about. And more sea turtles nest on Cumberland than anywhere else in Georgia.

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To Dungeness

We hiked along a quiet white beach the following morning to see the Dungeness estate. Squadrons of oystercatchers — black and white birds so named for their ability to drill through oysters shells with their pumpkin-colored beaks — laid claim to great patches of sand. Pelicans dived kamikaze-style into the water just beyond the breaking waves.

After about a mile, we cut inward through dunes littered with scores of silver-gray, weathered tree trunks eerily poking out of the sand (a “boneyard” in local speak).

Then we trekked over marshland on a boardwalk and through a cemetery bearing the tilting, white marble headstone of Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, father of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

A row of rusted-out antique cars marked the beginning of what’s left of the Dungeness estate. We passed a stucco carriage house filled with Park Service vehicles. As we walked through a field, we got our first good look at the fabled mansion.

Stone pillars marked the start of a sandy promenade leading to the overgrown front steps. Ivy grew around stone walls; ornamental shrubs remained. A dried-up birdbath-style fountain the size of a satellite dish still adorned the back lawn.

A handful of clean-cut day trippers who had just come off the ferry roamed amid a dozen wild horses. It was easy to see why author John McPhee called Cumberland “the world’s foremost island in salt-sprayed baronial ruins.”

We kept our distance, feeling that our more primitive experience of the island was a tad richer. It is the sort of reverse snobbery that holds particular irony on an island originally known as a rich man’s paradise — a thought that perhaps entered the mind of John F. Kennedy Jr. when he married Carolyn Bessette here in a secret 1996 ceremony held in a remote island chapel.

After swimming in the ocean, fishing in marshlands, kayaking in the surf, hiking on an empty beach, sleeping in a maritime forest and exploring the island’s mansion remains, we packed up and paddled for the mainland.

We had encountered few humans and many animals — armadillos, shorebirds, white-tail deer, fish, crabs, manatees, stingrays, bottlenose dolphins, wild horses, even an alligator. We talked about the first thing we’d do once we made it back to the mainland, as if we’d been stranded on this wild island for weeks: Take a hot shower, have a beer, eat a steak, check e-mail.

They were creature comforts we openly embraced, but we were happy to leave them behind for a backwoods stint on a wild island like this.

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On the shore

GETTING THERE:

From LAX, direct (stop, no change of plane) flights are available to Jacksonville, Fla., on Southwest Airlines; connecting flights (change of planes) are available on AirTran, American, Continental, Delta, Northwest and US Airways. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $158.

Ferry service to Cumberland Island leaves St. Marys, Ga., at 9 and 11:45 a.m. daily, except from December through February, when there is no service on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for children and $12 for seniors.

Park day use is $4 per person, per visit.

WHERE TO STAY:

Greyfield Inn, Cumberland Island; (866) 410-8051, https://www.greyfieldinn.com . Built in 1900 as a home for Lucy and Thomas Carnegie’s daughter, Margaret Ricketson, the oceanfront hotel was opened as the Greyfield Inn Resort in 1962 by Margaret’s daughter, Lucy R. Ferguson, and her family. Doubles start at $350 per night.

Sea Camp semi-primitive camping is $4 per day, per person; primitive backcountry camping is $2 per person, per day. Reservations are required and can be made through the National Park Service.

Up the Creek Xpeditions, 111 Osborne St., St. Marys, Ga.; (877) 878-4327, https://www.upthecreektrips.com , rents kayaks and camping equipment.

TO LEARN MORE:

National Park Service Visitors Center, P.O. Box 806, St. Marys, GA 31558; (888) 817-3421, https://www.nps.gov/cuis .

— Christopher Percy Collier