CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — As the October night deepened and her bedtime approached, Joel Caldwell's 4-year-old daughter huddled with her dad, dangling a stick she pretended was a fishing pole over a creek that has become Caldwell's passion project for nearly the entirety of his daughter's life.

“I want my children to grow up with a relationship to the natural world,” said Caldwell. “But we live in a neighborhood, so how do you do that?”

The answer Caldwell and two of his friends came to was improving the creek that snakes into their section of Charleston — preserving its tidal flow, expanding its reach and rewilding its edges. This wetland is a transition zone where the land meets the bigger river. Their work here is small in scale and local, but it is tangible and has built a community at

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