Isle of Palms Winter-Spring 2018-19

18 www.IsleOfPalmsMagazine.com | www.ILoveIOP.com | www.IOPmag.com the Intracoastal Waterway from Isle of Palms that is accessible only by boat. Possessed of a fiercely independent spirit, Sanders has lived alone on Goat Island since 1969. When she first moved there, she was the island’s only full-time resident and had no phone service. Every morning until she retired in 1996, Sanders rowed her canoe across the Intracoastal Waterway to Isle of Palms so she could go to work as a physical education teacher in Mount Pleasant. She would leave the house around 5 a.m. and sometimes return as late as 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. because she was coaching and driving the team bus. She didn’t miss a day of school for 14 years. Why did she go to all that trouble? “I just fell in love with this place,” Sanders recalled. That same dedication Sanders showed to her students is applied to her Goat Island Treasure Boxes. She typically works on around a dozen or so boxes at a time, cutting tops and bottoms, drilling holes in the lids and painting them. Most treasure boxes feature South Carolina themes on their finials – box handles – such as a palmetto tree; the Carolina wren, which is the state bird; dolphins; turtle hatchlings; and sand dollars. Most people store jewelry or keepsakes in them. “You buy it; you keep whatever you want in it. Everybody has their own idea of what they Goat Island Boxes E ven if they’ve never seen one of her elegant, handcrafted creations, locals might recognize the name Sarah Sanders from the 33 years she worked as a teacher and coach at Moultrie High School and Moultrie Middle School. The Lowcountry artisan and retired educator is the talent behind the distinctive gift collection called Goat Island Treasure Boxes. What began as a woodworking hobby and side project, selling a few boxes here and there at craft shows, eventually grew into a business in 2007. Initially, Sanders’ treasure boxes were made using discarded solid wood picture moldings she acquired from her friend, Jane Johnson. Now she gets the majority of her raw wood materials shipped to her in bulk, yet the meticulous attention to detail has remained unchanged. The transformation happens in the woodworking shed behind Sanders’ house on Goat Island, a tiny barrier island across By Colin McCandless Unique Local Treasures Photos courtesy of Diann Lyons Clark.