This is Still Here, a monthly column from writer Cassie Premo Steele exploring South Carolina's wild and rural spaces.
The whole world was feeling a need for renewal. I was, too.
So as 2020 turned to 2021, a year that had witnessed illness and death for millions of people from COVID-19, my family and I headed out to Poinsett State Park for a walk in the "mountains of the midlands."
The park is one of 16 South Carolina State Parks built by the Civilian Conservation Corps after the Great Depression, another attempt at renewal after collective trauma. This 1,000-acre area gives visitors a taste of the biodiversity of the whole state -- from rhododendrons in the mountainous regions to a tulip poplar and cypress swamp in the low-lying areas.
We were 20 minutes into the hike, heading up a steep incline on the Coquina Trail, when I stopped.
I felt like I couldn't catch my breath. My heart was racing. I was dizzy.
I told my family what was happening, and I decided to keep going but take it easy.
I went to see my doctor a few days later -- on Jan. 6, 2021 -- and this began my official journey into being diagnosed with Long Covid. It was a journey that included five trips to the emergency room, four hospital stays, three ambulance rides and two visits to the Post-COVID Clinic at Emory University.
My last hospital stay was in April 2023 at the Stroke Center at Prisma Baptist Hospital (the symptoms, largely cardiological and vascular, had progressed into neurological), where I received comprehensive care that set me on the path to wellness. I have been symptom-free since March 2024.
Basically, what happened is that the medical science had to have time to catch up with their understanding of what was happening, and this took some time.
To celebrate a year of feeling well, my family and I recently returned to Poinsett State Park to hike the same trail once again.
Most people are more familiar with the word "poinsettia" than with the history of the plant that is ubiquitous at this time of year.
The origin of the plant comes from the Aztecs, who used the plant to create red and purple dyes and created medicine from its milky sap. The Nahuatl name for the plant is Cuetlaxochitl (kwet-la-sho-she), and the plant comes into bloom in mid-December.
Beginning in the 16th century, Franciscan friars in the town of Taxco used the plant to decorate the Nativity scene at the Catholic Church after a young peasant girl named Pepita, on her way to Mass on Christmas Eve, created a bouquet from some roadside weeds as an offering to the baby Jesus, and they burst into bloom when she placed them on the altar. Since then, they became known as "la flor de Nochebuena," or the Christmas flower.
Two hundred years later in 1828, while serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, brought the flower from Mexico to his home in South Carolina, where he cultivated the plant in his greenhouse and began sharing it with his friends and colleagues.
As a former South Carolina state representative and member of Congress and one of the co-founders of the Smithsonian Institution, Poinsett had many well-known friends and colleagues, and it was through them that the name "poinsettia" came into common usage in the United States.
Because of Poinsett's history as the owner of enslaved people and the significant part he played in the displacement of many native peoples during the Trail of Tears while he served as Secretary of War from 1837 to 1841, many people are returning to referring to the plant by its the original name, Cuetlaxochitl, as a way of honoring its true origins.
The Cuetlaxochitl plant was used medicinally to treat fevers, conjunctivitis, skin conditions and circulation problems, and I was thinking about all of this -- illness and healing, history and heartbreak, and the ways that nature is an integral part of all our stories, whether we acknowledge it or not, as I walked through the beautiful forests of holly in the high hills that day.
The holly, another plant associated with the Christmas season, can grow up to 50-feet tall when not pruned as a bush in the home landscape. The Cuetlaxochitl can also grow up far beyond its potted stature, often seen up to eight feet tall in the wild.
There is so much in us, I reflected, that has been pruned and potted and pines for renewal.
Whether we are going through a hard time with our families or our finances or our health, it is often the gift of nature that can lift our spirits and allow us to find a deeper meaning on our path.
Poinsett State Park offers many paths.
In addition to the 1.4-mile loop of the Coquina Trail that winds its way through Spanish moss-covered mountain laurels, many other longer trails connect to Manchester State Forest and the Palmetto Trail.
There are also fishing boats, kayaks and canoes, pedal boats and stand-up paddleboards available for rental on the 10-acre lake, as well as private boat access. Visitors can also reserve picnic shelters, rent one of the five CCC-built cabins for lodging or reserve one of the dozens of tent and RV sites. In the summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day weekend, the lake is also open for swimming.
As I have learned over the course of my own healing journey, whether we hike, bike, swim or paddle, we do not go alone.
Nature, too, is with us on this voyage, as we learn to face our histories of horror and resilience in order to find our way to a new understanding of who we are and how we can grow into our full heights in order to be able to contribute to the collective well-being.
May you, too, find such renewal in the new year.