Before the sun had time to warm the sand on a brisk Saturday morning last November, Dean Russell walked the Oak Island shoreline, scouring the beach for body parts.

The 53-year-old construction worker and landscaper looked inconspicuous in jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. His dark sunglasses and the bandana holding back a shock of salt-and-pepper hair might’ve drawn suspicion, but the beach was mostly deserted, save for a few early-rising power walkers who seemed oblivious to Russell’s macabre mission.

Russell, an Oak Island property owner since 2020, had walked that beach plenty of times, occasionally finding arms and legs that had washed ashore. Or hands. Or feet.

Or heads.

This time, though, finding nothing, Russell headed to another favorite haunt: the boat ramp at Dutchman Creek Park, in neighboring Southport. Within minutes, he spied a limb — no, not an actual arm or leg, but a tree limb — as he navigated a sandy trail through a patch of sea oats.

Russell’s beach walks evolved when the father of four began repurposing driftwood into creative creatures. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

“That looks like an arm right there,” he said as he stooped to pick up a 6-foot-long piece of twisted driftwood with several bony “fingers” extending from one end of the branch. Russell admired his find, gently rubbing the gnarled wood with his hand as he examined it.

“This will make a great arm,” he told himself. “Or maybe it’s a leg — I don’t know yet.”

Most people walking that path at Dutchman Creek would’ve seen just a crooked, weathered piece of driftwood. Russell, though, saw something more — he saw possibility.

One day soon, if it hasn’t happened already, that lucky limb will become part of Oak Island’s popular Guardians of the Dunes, a small village of driftwood creatures assembled by Russell and placed on his oceanfront lot that’s currently part nature reserve and part art gallery.

The surreal sculptures, made entirely of driftwood and imagination, stand like 8-foot-tall sentinels in the sand, symbolically protecting the island’s precious dunes. Up close, the large, wooden creatures — some of which have “an attitude,” Russell says — seem almost menacing, but people are undeniably drawn to them.

Russell with his driftwood creation Murdoch. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

“They’ve kind of taken on a life of their own,” says Russell, a soft-spoken man who says he’s been surprised by the popularity of his seaside menagerie. “From the time I put my first sculpture out there, they just kind of blew up.”

That was about five years ago, after Russell bought a home on East Beach Drive with his wife, Amber. An avid outdoorsman, he began taking regular walks on the beach and couldn’t help but notice the unusual pieces of driftwood that frequently washed ashore.

“I was walking one day, and a piece of driftwood just caught my eye,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘Man, that looks like a face,’ so I picked it up and brought it home.”

After that first venture, Russell kept collecting. “I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do with all this wood. I started thinking about how I could fit the pieces together, and the next thing I knew, I had built my first statue.”

For weeks, the wooden creature stood in the privacy of Russell’s backyard — where he creates all his sculptures — but he eventually decided to move it to the small beach access lot across the street from his house, where others could see it.

“Nobody knew where it came from, and I didn’t tell them.”

“I put it out there in the middle of the night,” he says with a grin. “The next day, everybody was stopping to look. They were like, ‘What is this? It wasn’t out there last night.’ Nobody knew where it came from, and I didn’t tell them.”

When a second statue popped up on the lot — again, in the middle of the night — the townsfolk were doubly perplexed. Some of them even grilled Russell to see what he knew about the mysterious creatures, but he played dumb.

After a couple of months, Russell finally got busted when some late-night passersby spotted him installing another sculpture and confronted him. Word spread quickly after that, and Russell became an unexpected pseudo-celebrity.

When the townsfolk began discussing his sculptures on Facebook, someone referred to his first one as Groot, the tree-like superhero in the popular Guardians of the Galaxy comic book and movie franchise.

Root Groot was the first of Russell’s creative cast of characters, so named for his similarity to a tree-like superhero. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

“I came up with the name Root Groot because most of his head was made out of the roots from a stump,” he says. “I remember thinking he could be a guardian of our dunes.”

The name caught on, and before long, the entire driftwood diorama came to be known as the Guardians of the Dunes.

Today, there are nearly a dozen guardians in the small lot, made primarily of woods that are slow to rot, such as cedar and cypress, hardened by exposure to sea salt and sun. They’ve become a hit, not only with the locals — some of whom claim they drive by the lot every morning to see if there are any new residents — but also with vacationers, who invariably stop and pose for selfies with the sculptures.

“It never stops, especially in the summer,” Russell says. “It’s just constant.”

Russell enjoys the creations, too. Making them is therapeutic, he says, allowing him to tap into his artistic side while being outdoors. He also appreciates the environmental aspect of reclaiming washed-up driftwood and doing something meaningful with it.

More than that, though, Russell gets a kick out of seeing others delight in his creatures. From the porch of his house across the street, he spends many hours sitting and watching visitors of all ages interact with them.

Russell’s larger-than-life creations, such as Beach Bird turn heads. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

One day last summer, Russell couldn’t help but smile as he saw a golf cart passing his field of guardians. Sitting up front in the cart were an older man and woman, and in the back sat a small boy of about 4 or 5, presumably the couple’s grandson or great-grandson.

As soon as the cart passed the statues, the boy began yelling, “Turn around! Turn around!”

The cart did a U-turn and had scarcely come to a stop before the boy was running to get a better look at the strange, wooden guardians. A moment later, his relatives joined him.

“Man, he’s 5 and they’re 80, and they all love it,” Russell said to himself. “That’s pretty cool.”

Dean Russell’s driftwood sculptures can be found on East Beach Drive, between 55th and 58th streets, on Oak Island.