In honor of Valentine’s Day I thought I would share a special place with you all. (Y’all if you’re fancy). It’s a place that I love, or rather, that I am in love with! Like seriously, madly in love with. I have dreams about it.

If this place were a person, I would skip the whole dating/getting to know each other/courtship thing and just marry it right on the spot. Then I would have it all to myself for ever and ever (or at least until we grow apart, start resenting each other and split. But we’d have a few good years in there, right?)

Anyway, it’s a place that is arrestingly beautiful in an eerie, quirky and mysterious way; it’s just a little bit weird and dark. And that intrigues me.

This place is the beach at Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina.

It’s such a bizarre and unexpected landscape, like Dr. Seuss teamed up the Brothers Grimm to make their personal fantasyland. And apparently mine as well.

There was peace in the chaos, stillness in the violence that caused it to exist.

There were few other people on the beach, but as I made way north along the shore, I ran into a couple that had frequented Hunting Island State Park for over 20 years.

I asked them about the skeleton trees, had they always been there or had the mega-storms of the past several years washed them all ashore?

Turns out, the beach has looked pretty much the same for at least the past 20 years. Some trees are washed up from elsewhere due to a unique tidal pull in the area, but most are simply left stranded as the ocean continues to erode the shore out from under them.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I was so excited about a place – to be in, to explore, to photograph. It was everything.

When I begrudgingly left at the end of the day, I had a love-struck grin on my face that just wouldn’t quit. I felt lightheaded and maybe just a little ill at the thought of having to part ways.

Thing is, I wasn’t even planning on visiting Hunting Island State Park – didn’t know it even existed until I spotted a sign for it on the side of the highway.

 “I just do things and hope for the best. Say yes, take a chance and sometimes it’s terrific and sometimes it’s not.”  -Christopher Walken

This time it was terrific!