AWENDAW — Drive north on U.S. Highway 17, past the shopping centers and subdivisions, and you’ll come to a small town that sits at the proverbial crossroads of South Carolina’s most-pressing environmental issues. Here the Milky Way still shines at night, the wetlands teem with life, and the trees grow dense enough to create a near-perpetual dusk in the forest below.

But as Charleston County is reshaped by a fast-growing population and rising seas, the future of Awendaw and its wild spaces is in an uneasy limbo, and there’s no easy path towards a solution.

In this small town, anxieties about over-development collide with increased flooding, leaky septic tanks and the threat of wildfires. All of those issues are playing out in a town wedged between two of South Carolina’s most-diverse ecosystems: the Francis Marion National Forest and Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge.