My name is Victoria Bennett and I'm a sophomore at the University of South Carolina. I've lived in South Carolina all my life and have a love for it that is almost unexplainable. I am rooted to this state, the Lowcountry in particular. I suppose the only way to really explain it is that I am part of this land, and it is part of me.
I come from love, conceived by the vineyards of Sonoma and Lowcountry swamps, converging during the desert night in a state Daniel Webster once called "a barren waste of prairie dogs, cactus, and shifting sands; incapable of producing anything, and therefore not worth retaining." Though it certainly be God's will and not that of Daniel Webster, I was not meant to be of Arizona blood. Instead, Carolina Jasmine flows through my veins and images of Charleston pad the walls of my skull. I am cobblestone streets. I am wrought iron gates. I am sweet tea and boiled shrimp. I am the moss-fringed oaks lining the Cooper River. I am a cast iron skillet. I am wild irises. I am the sound of rain on a tin roof. I am the rusty remains of a red '74 Ford pickup. I am the dirt roads that crisscross Berkeley County. But before I was all of these things, I was only everything that preceded me.
A wise and kindred spirit once told me, under a knowing moon, "You have an old soul." I looked past his eyes to the ocean that extended beyond, while black waves lapped at my ankles, pulling the sand from beneath my feet as they receded. I could not ignore the gentle tug I felt - the black arms curling round my ankles and the hemline of my dress, calling me to join the other old souls that meditated in the sea. There English gents sip tea on the same current that Wagner's valkyries sing the pride of Deutschland. Scottish warriors wield Claymores assuaging their terrified enemies. Norwegians gather around fires to hear tales of Asgard, home of their gods. Each spirit rides his own wave, but never can they be isolated. Every molecule mingles with the rest, combining the ocean of my ancestors that, rhythmically, advances wave after successive wave, lapping the edge of my consciousness. I am one of them, and in the same fashion, they are me.
I also come from far beyond the distinguishable whitecaps, close to where I can touch the horizon. Here I was made of a rib, and before that, dust. I come from the earth, and I go to the earth, as deemed by God, "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." I sprang from the same origin as the grass and the cedar tree, the robin and the squirrel, the whale and the crab. The sun too is my relation. We are bound together by the same cosmic dust created by the clash of light and darkness, beyond the reaches of time.