Whether you live here or visit for a few days a year, North Carolina’s coast has a way of growing on you, of bringing you back for more. More meals with the ones you love, more hours to laze away by the shore, more moments of wonder. There’s no bottle big enough to hold all of that, but what if there were something so much a part of this place that every time you saw it, you were transported in a blink to blissful moments under a Carolina blue sky?

A hammock delivers memories of coastal breezes, family vacations full of wild horses and lighthouses, and the serenity of seaside sunsets every time you touch its intricate web of ropes. These handmade havens from Outer Banks Hammocks, Nags Head Hammocks, and Hatteras Hammocks carry you from the mundane to a time and place you’d rather be.

According to Walter Perkins III, CEO of The Hammock Source in Greenville, the Carolinas are the cradle of woven rope hammocks — with a coastal mythology to match.

What does it take to make a Nags Head Hammock? More than 1,000 feet of rope, woven with skill; two wooden bars; some hanging hardware; and perhaps a bit of the breezy charm of the Outer Banks. photograph by Chris Hannant

“This riverboat captain down around Pawleys Island, South Carolina, needed a more comfortable way to sleep on those steamy Lowcountry nights,” Perkins explains. “He wove a bed from cotton rope and a double-latch weave, made stretchers from barrel staves, tied it all together, and he had a hammock. He created the design in 1889 and started peddling Pawleys Island Hammocks.”

South Carolina may have invented the hammock we know and love, but it was perfected here in North Carolina, thanks in no small part to Walter Perkins Jr., better known as Mr. P.

“Mr. P, that’s my father,” Perkins says proudly. “He’s the reason we’re here today. Well, him and my grandparents.”

In 1971, Mr. P was traveling across the Southeast as a buyer for American Tobacco Company when his mother asked a favor: Will you pick up one of those Pawleys Island Hammocks for the beach house? Mr. P got two. He hung his parents’ but took apart the second, studied it, and taught himself to weave. After experimenting with materials and methods, he settled on his own style.

At the Nags Head Hammocks shop in Duck, with its high ceilings and abundance of natural light, you can easily picture yourself swaying the day away in a rope hammock, swing, or rocker. photograph by Chris Hannant

“Dad would weave a bunch of hammocks and throw them in the trunk of his car, peddling them after his tobacco business was done,” Perkins says. “He sold more and more of them, and one day, this hobby he had turned into a business.”

That business became Hatteras Hammocks, a name chosen to reflect the love visitors have for the Outer Banks and the North Carolina coast, as well as the strength that the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse symbolizes.

“I wove, Mom wove, and Dad wove, too; it was all we could do to keep up with things for a while,” he recalls. With some lucky breaks — an investment from a family friend and a big order from L.L. Bean — Mr. P was able to expand the business. His hammock empire eventually grew to encompass several brands, including the original Pawleys Island Hammocks in 1997 and Nags Head Hammocks in 2004. All are part of The Hammock Source today.

• • •

There must’ve been something in the air, or on the breeze, in 1971. The same year Mr. P learned to weave, Kellie Burke and Rye Mann started Nautilus Hammocks in Wrightsville Beach. The following year, Woody Styron took over operations and, like Mr. P, borrowed a familiar name to inject a little nostalgia into the Nautilus brand. Outer Banks Hammocks was born.

“I guess he didn’t think anybody but surfers and locals knew Wrightsville Beach, so he went with a more recognizable name,” says Jonathan Allen, owner and operator of Outer Banks Hammocks & Outdoor Furniture.

By 1977, Styron had sold to Clark Helton, who ran the place for almost 30 years. Allen applied for a job to earn some money after he graduated from high school. “I wove my first hammock the summer of ’86, and I’ve been doing it ever since,” he says. He recalls that weaving was “the best job a surfer could want. No set hours. When the surf was up, we’d hang the ‘closed’ sign and go to the beach.”

Despite its name, Outer Banks Hammocks has been based near Wrightsville Beach since it began in 1971. Jonathan Allen began weaving there the summer after he graduated from high school and eventually bought the business in 2005. photograph by MALLORY CASH

He wove every summer until he graduated college in 1991. “I’d been weaving and selling and teaching folks to weave for several summers, and suddenly, I found myself as the manager,” he says.

When Allen was in his 20s, all he wanted was to surf and travel, and hammocks let him do that. But then he wanted more. In 2005, he bought Outer Banks Hammocks. The company remains small: A mile from the waves at Wrightsville Beach, a four-room bungalow houses the whole operation. “We weave here, sell here, and stay focused on this place,” he says.

And it’s true. Some of the wood components are made by a local nonprofit, Kids Making It, which teaches woodworking and entrepreneurial skills to youths. Dozens of locals have learned to weave under Allen’s tutelage.

Moreover, Allen is passionate about selling locally and customizing sizes and materials. He recalls one customer who had two trees close together on his property. No standard hammock hung between them properly, so Allen made one just for him.

• • •

At Outer Banks Hammocks, reggae pours out of a speaker, setting the rhythm for Jasmine Beck, a weaver of 10 years. Her work is mesmerizing.

“She makes weaving seem easy, but it takes 20, 30 hours to really train someone, and Jasmine is one of the best I’ve worked with,” Allen says.

The compliment doesn’t break her rhythm, but it puts a smile on her face.

“If we brought you on board,” she says, “we’d weave several together before you started one of your own. And even if we did 10, that first solo hammock would take you three to five hours, and you’d make plenty of mistakes.”

Weavers like Jasmine Beck work at large looms in the little yellow bungalow that houses Outer Banks Hammocks. photograph by MALLORY CASH

New weavers learn to braid a border called a sinnet and to weave the ring ropes, which attach the ring to the bed of the hammock. It all looks easy — but it’s not. At least not at first.

Beck starts with a sinnet. Her fingers — strong and calloused and marked with rope burns — are as eloquent as a flamenco guitarist’s as she braids a flat, four-part plait. In less than a minute, she’s done. She pirouettes to the upright loom, a wooden contraption of nails and hinges with years’ worth of marks denoting hammock sizes, and starts the weaving dance.

She pins the sinnet to the top bar, stretching it taut against the nails. Picking up the fid — the shuttle holding anywhere from 195 to 575 feet of thin rope — she wraps it behind a bar on the loom, then “we pull a little loop free here … and here … and here” punctuating each “here” with a tug on the rope and the quick passage of the fid down through one loop after the other. She shuffles her feet as she goes.

Beck’s skilled hands find a rhythm to their weaving. photograph by MALLORY CASH

“Open a loop, drop the fid, catch it, repeat,” she says, singsonging her instructions to the music. Soon, she’s finished a row, looped the fid behind a bar at the other end of the loom, and is halfway back to where she started, looping and dropping and shuffling from left to right to left. She’s found her groove, and it’s going smoothly — until it’s not.

She laughs. “You distracted me. Look.” She steps aside and gestures at what looks like a perfect row of weaving. She runs her hand along it. “Here,” she tugs the rope, and a loop becomes half a knot. She went over when she should’ve gone under, or maybe it’s the other way around. In seconds, she’s fixed it and is on the homestretch of a swing chair.

• • •

More than 200 miles north, Susan beavers weaves at the Nags Head Hammocks shop in Duck. She’s 75 and has been weaving for more than two decades. “Twenty-two, 24 years?” she says. “I took a couple off to help with my grandbabies, and I’ve lost track.”

Like Beck, she has strong, working hands. Her knuckles are large, the calluses from fid and rope prominent. “I used to box, you know,” she says, making loose fists and bouncing on her toes. You can imagine her in the boxing gym she owns, throwing crisp jabs into a heavy bag.

At the Nags Head Hammocks shop in Duck, Susan Beavers’s skill is part of the draw: You’ll often find her weaving on a stage right in the middle of the store. photograph by Chris Hannant

She weaves on a little stage in the center of the store, surrounded by artfully placed posts and beams from which hammocks and hammock swings hang in a dozen colors. Out front and on the back deck overlooking Currituck Sound, there are dozens more hammocks hanging from beams and mounted on wooden and metal stands. Other furniture fills the spaces between the hammocks.

“We’re a store full of hammocks, but I don’t think that’s what we sell,” she says. “I think we sell this place. People want to take home a feeling, a memory. They want to feel the Outer Banks in their backyard in Raleigh or Greensboro or Columbus, Ohio.”

Her favorite product is the swing — specifically the double swing, with two hammock slings to cradle two sitters. She gestures to one and sits.

Stop by Nags Head Hammocks shop in Duck and you might see Beavers weaving on a little stage in the center of the store.  photograph by Chris Hannant

“The swing invites a comfortable silence or an easy conversation. I like it because it creates moments we don’t always share in our day-to-day.” It takes a full minute of comfortable silence, easy conversation, and the rhythmic zhhzhhzhh of the swing for Beavers to say this. The cry of gulls creeps in from outside. After another minute, she breaks the silence with a near-whisper. “Oh, this is nice.”

She’s right. This is what people buy — not rope and wood but a feeling.

Ryan Williams, who manages the trio of Nags Head Hammocks shops on the Outer Banks, agrees. “Visitors walk away with more than a hammock,” he says. “They leave with nostalgia, with a connection to the Outer Banks and the core memories they’ve made here. They leave wanting to make more memories when they return.”

• • •

Back at The Hammock Source in Greenville, the 300,000-square-foot factory hums with activity. In one room, spools of thread become yarn and then rope. In another, workers use industrial sewing machines to make tufted and quilted hammock beds, while a few dozen paces away, weavers work their art. Some braid sinnets and ring knots. Others perform the dance, gracefully side-stepping and deftly looping the rope, dropping and catching the fid, and repeating, repeating, repeating until they have a hammock.

Todd Nifong, vice president of sales and marketing, stands and watches the weavers. At each station, there’s a cart loaded with hammocks waiting for the next step in production or spools of rope waiting to become hammocks. “We estimate that we’ve used 80 million feet of cotton rope and our own Duracord rope since 1971.”

To put that in context, it’s about six trips coast to coast in the U.S., or more than half the circumference of Earth. In rope. For hammocks.

In addition to the store in Duck, Nags Head Hammocks has shops in Kill Devil Hills (pictured) and Corolla. photograph by Chris Hannant

But distance can be deceiving. Those 80 million feet of rope are more — and somehow less — than a handful of coast-to-coast trips. They’re a tie that binds, closing the distance between you and sunsets and sunrises and lazy afternoons 20 years gone. The distance between now and the last time your grandmother joined the family beach trip. The distance between the kids or grandkids falling asleep on your chest, their weight impossibly light and improbably pinning you to the hammock.

They’re a tether stretching from your home and your heart to a particular patch of coast, to Wrightsville Beach or Hatteras Island or Nags Head. To the time you fell in love with a place and knew you’d never be complete unless you took a piece of it with you.

To learn more about Hatteras Hammocks and Nags Head Hammocks, visit thehammocksource.com.

To learn more about Outer Banks Hammocks, call (910) 256-4001 or visit obxhammocks.com.