DORCHESTER — Sparkle Clark lives in a small home in the woods around Four Hole Swamp, which sits near Dorchester County’s border with Berkeley. Her closest neighbor is not a person; it’s a sand mine.
Clark calls her land “Pretty Place,” inspired by a scenic overlook and open-air chapel in the Upstate, because it is her personal paradise. Her home stands on what was once the foundation for a party gazebo next to the overgrown, Olympic-sized, granite swimming pool her father and uncle built decades ago. She said a foot or two of water usually pools at the bottom, attracting wading birds that she loves to photograph.
Some days, the only sounds she hears are bird calls, rainfall, planes overhead and the occasional shot of a hunting rifle in the distance…