I expended several magazines of pistol ammunition on the targets. I fired first on single targets, and then worked them as multiples. Then I walked as I shot, and after that, I ran—always closing with the targets—always firing on the move.

Satisfied that the old habits were still there, I holstered my pistol, took a plastic garbage bag from my pocket, and picked up all the shotgun shells and nine-millimeter brass. After that, I gathered up the targets and returned to the boat.

The boat had floated a bit on the rising tide, but I pulled her into shore with the anchor rope. I loaded my stuff and grabbed a couple more bags from the bow storage locker. Returning to the center of the island, I picked up the trash that had been left behind. Then I walked to the end of the island to look at man’s residue from another era.

At the very tip of the island, hidden in a thicket of palmettos and gallberry bushes are three shell mounds—piles of oyster shells left behind by the Indian inhabitants of this area.

These are the remains of who knows how many shellfish feasts, consumed and enjoyed long before Europeans ever saw this land. In the center of each mound is an indentation—a hole. And each mound I’ve discovered out here on these islands has a similar hole in the center. For a while I couldn’t fathom why it was there and then one day it occurred to me: It was left when the tree that was originally in the center of the mound rotted away. For some reason, it seems, the Indians always made the mounds around the base of a tree. Maybe someday I could find an anthropologist who could tell me why.

But just looking at these mounds—the remains of a distant and extinct people—caused me to reflect on the bounty of this region and realize once again what a precious Earth we inhabit. Everything we require for life comes from the Earth and her waters. And when we treat it badly—abusing and spoiling its gifts by reason of avarice and stupidity—we harm only ourselves.

You can trash a house with filth and refuse until it becomes unfit for habitation and you have to move someplace else—or sicken and possibly die of the consequences. But this is the only planet we have—there is no other place to go. And if we don’t clean up our act in a serious way, and soon, it is the Earth itself that will slough us off like a snake shedding a dead skin.