Rising slightly above sea level on the east’ard edge of North Carolina lies a watery part of the world, trimmed by salt marsh, blanketed in needlerush, and molded with wind-sculpted live oaks. It’s the kind of place where sunsets seem more golden and clear days more blue, where light and shadow feel amplified and a hard northwest wind sharper, where the pungent scent of the marsh is as welcome as a gentle southwest breeze. Here, the memory of past storms and the fear of those yet to come are a constant and lasting reminder of Mother Nature’s mercy and wrath. A sense of wildness prevails, untamed by the world beyond.

Down East Carteret County is more than a gateway to Cape Lookout National Seashore, a scenic byway, and a wildlife refuge. It is an elegy to wind and tide, an ode to salt and scales. It’s a portal to an endangered way of life that persists, somehow, for now.

Down East is defined, specifically and inextricably, by its geography and relationship with water. Beginning on the east side of the North River, it meanders over dozens of bridges, through unincorporated communities bound by Harkers Island to the south and Cedar Island to the north: Bettie fades south into Otway, shifts into Straits, curves into Gloucester, meanders to Marshallberg, continues north through Smyrna and on to Williston, inches north and east through Davis, Stacy, Sea Level, and Atlantic before terminating at Cedar Island along Pamlico Sound. Protected from the Atlantic Ocean by a chain of barrier islands — Core Banks, Cape Lookout, and Shackleford Banks — that hem in Core and Back sounds, these tiny hamlets are a part of a world on the edge.

Down East is carved and buoyed by salt water, a people’s deep connection to place, and a fervent pride in their shared heritage and traditions. From boatbuilding and commercial fishing to duck hunting and decoy carving, the rituals of the region trace and tap residents’ waterlogged roots to generations of earnest, hardworking, and determined ancestors.

• • •

Zack Davis switches off the light in his classroom and closes the door to the shop where he teaches marine trades and welding technology at the local high school. He’s heading to his other job, the one he was born into. Ten miles down the road, his shrimp trawler, Addie and Dallas, named after his two kids, is tied up on Marshallberg’s Sleepy Creek, where Davis was raised. Like most folks Down East, his roots run deep. “My family on my mama’s side is from Shackleford. My great-great-great-grandparents are buried over there,” he says. “My daddy’s side has been on Marshallberg around 10 or 12 generations back. Once they moved to Marshallberg, they never left. I’m living on the same land my ancestors lived on.”

Davis pulls his pickup into the dirt path in front of the boathouse where he built Addie and Dallas by hand, plank by plank. “My great-granddad was a boatbuilder, and my dad is a boatbuilder. And I’m not a boatbuilder, but I did build this one,” he says, gesturing to the 56-foot trawler tugging at the dock lines along the bank.

Shrimp trawlers, like Zack Davis’s Addie and Dallas are a staple off the coast of Down East. photograph by Baxter Miller

Down East’s boatbuilding tradition was born out of necessity. In a time before bridges and roads, when the water was the highway, boats were a lifeline, connecting communities and transporting people and supplies. They were a means by which to make a living, too. Pole-skiff and sail sharpies evolved into gas-powered round sterns and iconic flare-bow boats.

Every community Down East was, at one time, home to a master boatbuilder. Under a canopy of live oaks, somewhere close to the shore, men built boats from wood by “rack of the eye” — using an innate sense of engineering to blend balance and design without blueprints as they imparted function, art, and part of themselves into every vessel.

“Granddaddy always said, ‘You ought to set one up in the backyard and build it. Just take your time to do it.’ A couple of years ago, we said, ‘What the heck? Let’s give it a shot,’” Davis says.

Shrimper Zack Davis, whose family has lived Down East for generations, makes and mends his net gear by hand. photograph by Baxter Miller

Two and a half years after he cut the first piece of wood, Addie and Dallas was lowered into Sleepy Creek. But the boat was a means to an end. In the same way that boatbuilding runs in Davis’s blood, so does commercial fishing.

“As a kid, I’d see these big shrimp trawlers come by from Harkers Island,” he says. “Every evening, they’d come by, and every morning, at daylight, they’d come back. The more I looked at them, the more I thought, If I just had one of them, I’d be set.”

He started shrimping when he was 12 and has never stopped. Now, it’s the clock around which his life revolves. “In the summer, shrimping drives whatever I do, day and night. It all depends on how they’re running, the moon cycle, and what kind of season you’re having.”

On Pamlico Sound off Cedar Island, Davis trawls for shrimp in the boat that he built by hand and named for his kids, Addie and Dallas. photograph by Baxter Miller

Over the past generation, fish houses have shuttered one after the other, leaving North Carolina’s seafood industry in peril. Wooden workboats are being replaced by recreational vessels; pound and channel nets by rods and reels. Now more than ever, fishing as a way of life Down East hinges on the commitment of folks like Davis, who keep workboats working, embrace their heritage proudly, and share the bounty of our pristine waters with people across the state and beyond.

“There’s nothing better than a day shrimping,” Davis says. “Come out of Beaufort Bar about daylight and point her toward the lighthouse. About the time it drops off — 40, 45 foot — is when you want to slow down. You let the rigs down and set out. Take her right into the sunlight, run her right straight toward the sun.” He gestures to an imaginary horizon. “When you get down about to Whale Creek, turn around and come back to the east’ard side of the Bar. Then, you just go to-and-fro all day. There’s just nothing better. We’re very fortunate. We live in a blessed place, there’s no question.”

• • •

Down the road from Zack Davis, the shed behind Corey Lawrence’s home in Otway looks like it could be a lot of things — part museum, part workshop, part garage — but it’s where he unveils, sliver by sliver, a redhead or pintail decoy buried in a block of sweet-smelling tupelo or juniper. For Lawrence, born and raised on Harkers Island, decoy carving is a love and a calling that has defined his family for generations.

“Duck hunting has always been a part of my life,” he says. “I grew up in a living room lined with decoys and sprinkled with wood shavings. My dad would sit in the living room with a newspaper across his lap and carve out heads to repair broken decoys so we could hunt.”

In his backyard shed in Otway, Corey Lawrence carves wooden decoys by hand, carrying on the legacy of his family — and the Down East region. photograph by Baxter Miller

Like boatbuilding and commercial fishing, waterfowling is a time-honored cornerstone of life Down East, past and present. Situated along the Atlantic Flyway, Core Sound’s expansive water and extensive marsh attracts a bevy of ducks, geese, and swans each winter. Once essential for survival, today they are hunted for both sustenance and sport.

When Lawrence was 12, he needed to earn his woodworking merit badge for Scouts. He points to a row of little black-and-white decoys lined up along a shelf. “The simplest thing I knew to do would be to carve a little bufflehead,” he says. “They’re little and not very colorful.” His father handed him his pocketknife and a block of wood. That moment, Lawrence’s first decoy, was a sacrament, a nourishing of a destiny. Out of a block of tupelo, a rudimentary decoy was born, and a passion was lit, inherited from his father and now passed on to Lawrence’s children.

Decoys like Lawrence’s are an icon of Carteret County. photograph by Baxter Miller

Before the ’80s in Core Sound, decoys were pragmatic tools meant to lure waterfowl. That changed in 1987, when Lawrence’s father, David, and six other island carvers laid the foundation for the Core Sound Decoy Carvers Guild and the first Core Sound Decoy Festival. Today, the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center has ensured the preservation and perpetuation of an almost-lost art. David’s Room at the museum is a living testament to the Lawrences’ heritage — a place where, in David’s spirit, demonstrations are held and carvers gather in fellowship to reaffirm the community’s identity ingrained in decoys. Over the past 30 years, this newfound recognition transformed Core Sound decoys from an everyday, utilitarian tool into a highly collectible and valuable folk art.

More than that, though, decoys are a reminder of the ancestors who carved them and those who hunted over them. They are a spiritual connection to the past and a way to continue family traditions. Today, as Lawrence passes down the practice to his sons and daughters, it is a history that honors a new generation of carvers, tapping an innate gift.

Waterfowl hunting on the North River and the sounds is a long-standing tradition for many families. photograph by Baxter Miller

“Some of my earliest memories are of my daddy taking me hunting,” Lawrence says. “There were times it would be cold and miserable, but, bless his heart, he wanted me to be with him so bad. I remember he’d tote a sack of decoys in one hand and his old Mossberg shotgun in the other, and I’d be on his back with a BB gun. He’d trudge through a marsh somewhere just to sit and spend time with me.” Tears well in his eyes. When he speaks of his dad, the loss is palpable, a wound every bit as tender today as when it first opened in 2001. “I wish I could spend another day like that. I do the same thing with my kids. It’s not [as much] about the decoys or the hunting as it is time with family and friends.”

Decoys are memories made material, a way of holding on to what matters most. They conjure dark winter mornings, when marsh grass is imprisoned in thin sheets of ice and breath hangs in vanishing little clouds. They are the fading of stars as the sun breaks the horizon and the sound of wings flapping in the wind. They are crimson heads cast against a gray sky. They are the smell of gunpowder and a ringing in the ear. Decoys are moments — shared from a reed-covered duck blind, shoulder-to-shoulder with the people you love — made tangible.

• • •

Like other rural, remote coastal communities, the only constant Down East is change. Its relative isolation has been its preservation, but today, the world “from off” creeps closer and closer. The sound of the distinct Outer Banks brogue becomes fainter with each generation. Fewer wooden workboats idle in the sound. As development encroaches and property values appreciate, fewer generational families can afford to inherit property. Local stores close. Chains fill their void. Each year, it becomes harder to make ends meet by fishing for a living. With limited employment opportunities, young people face moving off, raising the question: Who will ensure that the traditions of Down East continue?

But Core Sounders are no strangers to challenges, and they rise to hardship as a collective. Among the cornerstones of Down East, perhaps none is greater than community. Those who call this region home are strong, self-reliant, sturdy people. They weather life’s setbacks and nature’s storms together. Like their ancestors, they hold close to one another, reminding each other of who they are and the bonds they share, determined to ensure that future generations will inherit the legacy of being from and of Core Sound. The kinship to the place and each other is sacred, as constant as the swaying of marsh grass, as reliable as the primordial smell of the marsh, as true as the live oaks anchored in shifting sands.