Reimagining the Land Our Families Leave Us

Charleston, SC

Le’Cle Consulting Archive
Saturday, September 6, 2025

They first came to Norwood’s Vineyard over the summer. What inspired them wasn’t only the beauty of the vines or the pavilion, but the way our family had taken land planted by my grandfather and given it new breath. They saw how we honored what came before us while daring to imagine what else it could become. And before they left, they extended an invitation: come to Charleston, come see our family’s land, and help us dream of what it might hold.

That’s how I found myself on a boat at six in the morning, crossing the tide to reach a barrier island off James Island. The family that invited me to Charleston owns two properties: an island, raw and untouched, and a pasture they’ve held for over a century. Both carry history. Both hold possibility.

We had only a short window before the tide would drop too low for the boat to return, so we walked quickly. Boots sprayed down, machete in hand, the hum of mosquitoes thick in the air, I stepped onto their island for the first time. Fishermen cast their nets in the distance. The trees rose like sentinels, carrying stories that stretched far beyond us. I breathed it in and remembered why I always want to meet the land in its rawest form. Before any plans or renderings. Before anyone else decides what should be done. I want the land itself to tell me what it longs to become.

Later that day, we drove out to Mosquito Beach, where their family has held land for over a century. From the road it looked ordinary enough, just a stretch of pasture across from the water. But then we stepped past the tree line. What opened up was vast and breathtaking, like the Pride Rock moment in The Lion King when the horizon suddenly reveals itself. Acres upon acres of untouched beauty, dotted only with a grazing bull and the traces of what once had been: hog pens, chicken coops, cattle yards. I could almost see the people who had walked it before, almost feel their footsteps still pressing into the soil.

As they pointed out what was overgrown, what needed to be cut back, I couldn’t help but think how often we overlook what is already magnificent. They spoke of vineyards and possibilities. I listened, but I also let the land speak. Sometimes reimagining doesn’t mean erasing. Sometimes it means allowing what’s already there to breathe in a new way.

The next evening, their whole family gathered us for dinner. Aunts, uncles, cousins poured through the door with dishes in hand—casseroles, crab salad, smoked turkey, fried fish, ribs, macaroni and cheese. It was Southern hospitality in its purest form. After we ate, they turned to me. They wanted to hear what I thought.

Before I offered anything, I asked them to dream. What did they see if they could imagine without fear? What did they hope this land might become? Only then did I share my own story—how my grandfather’s vineyard became our inheritance, how my family wrestled with honoring what had been while daring to build what could be.

Then their uncle, one of the oldest living relatives still tending the land, began to speak. He told stories of Mosquito Beach—how it was named, what life was like when he was a boy, what this place had meant to generations before. I sat in awe, feeling as though I was witnessing history itself being handed down across the table.

That’s when I was reminded: inheritance is more than deeds and property. It’s stories, memory, the thread that ties us to those who came before. Too often that thread frays. Land is left unused, stories go untold, and the legacy fades. But it doesn’t have to.

Reimagining land is not about changing everything. It’s about listening carefully—to the family, to the history, to the land itself. It’s about asking how inheritance can be turned into legacy, not just preserved but given new life.

As I left Charleston, I thought about how many families hold land quietly in the background of their lives. A grandmother’s house. An uncle’s pasture. An acre here, a field there. What if we asked what those places might still hold? What if we treated them as the gifts they already are?

The path isn’t simple. Every family is different. Every property has its own complexities. But I believe this: when land is held with care, when stories are honored and the future is invited in, inheritance becomes more than what is left behind. It becomes a legacy that carries forward.