granddaddy A. A. died several years before I was born near the 

 floodplains of the Black River. Yet he left me a gift that could only have been 

 more precious had I taken it from his hands. A month before his death, he 

 bought 2 1 acres of Sampson County farmland between the old North 



Carolina railroad towns of Kerr Station and Ivanhoe. It was there 



in the shadow of the Black' s cypress, gum, live oak and loblolly pine 



that I spent my childhood in awe of his legacy. 



family lived a half- 

 mile from the banks of this blackwater 

 river in a two-story antebellum house 

 cluttered with antiques. Window 

 screens were our air-conditioning; the 

 songs of owls and whippoorwills in the 

 swamp, our vespers. 



The river was ever 

 present in our lives. At our 

 berth on the Black — Jackie 

 Landing — local fishermen 

 would net the bounty from 

 the spring runs of herring, 

 frying the bony fish to a crisp 

 in cast-iron cookers and 

 scrambling the roe with 

 eggs. These evenings were 

 dark and smoky and deli- 

 cious. In the swamp, I was an 

 honorary Boy Scout, playing 

 Capture the Flag, building 

 rope bridges and going on 

 fruitless "snipe hunts" with 

 my brothers. 



My stewardship efforts 

 along the Black began early 

 with a concern for bear, deer, 

 bobcat and other animals. At 

 9, 1 nailed to a tree a piece of 

 cardboard on which I wrote in 

 magic marker: "Wildlife Pre- 

 serve: No Hunting. No Loud 

 Talking." The soggy sign was my dec- 

 laration to the world that this was a 

 hallowed place. Now, almost 20 years 

 later, the world is awakening to this 

 slow-winding tributary of the Cape 

 Fear River. 



I expanded my own appreciation 

 of the Black River on a canoe trip in 

 January, gorging on a sensory feast and 

 rekindling my love for a river that has 

 flowed through my life. 



Formed by the confluence of Great 



Coharie and Six Runs creeks in the 

 belly of Sampson County, this 66-mile 

 stream siphons the South River, then 

 winds through Bladen and Pender 

 counties before spilling into the Cape 

 Fear about 16 miles above Wilmington. 



Cypress knees 



Though the watershed drains such 

 larger towns as Clinton and Dunn, the 

 Black River skirts mostly sleepy com- 

 munities such as Harrells, Atkinson and 

 Currie. 



Its centuries-old cypresses have 

 landed the Black in the pages of The 

 New York Times and Audubon maga- 

 zine and rooted the river in the public 

 consciousness. In the early 1980s, the 

 state's Natural Heritage Program 

 alerted an Arkansas researcher to an 



area of old-growth bald cypress along a 

 9-mile section near the river's midpoint. 

 The scientist, who studies the history of 

 world climate change by coring old 

 trees, expected to find specimens a 

 couple of hundred years old. What he 

 found were trees that most 

 likely shared the earth with 

 Jesus Christ. 



"It's my firm belief that 

 there are many 2,000-year- 

 old trees at Black River," 

 says David Stahle, a 

 dendrochronologist at the 

 University of Arkansas at 

 Fayetteville. "The oldest 

 one we've found is 1,700 

 years old. But many of the 

 super-old trees get heartrot, 

 and we've only cored a small 

 fraction of the ancient trees 

 still present on the Black. It's 

 reasonable to conclude that 

 some of the old Black River 

 cypress have been there for 

 over two millenia. 



"These are the oldest 

 trees that we know of in east- 

 ern North America and some 

 of the oldest in the world," 

 says Stahle, who is using his 

 tree-ring data to reach centu- 

 ries into the past to reconstruct drought 

 patterns and possibly predict climate 

 variation in the future. Stahle has also 

 cored long-dead trees preserved in the 

 water to further extend the chronology. 



The ancient cypresses may be the 

 river's biggest celebrities, but pristine 

 water quality, unusual plants and ani- 

 mals and undisturbed scenic beauty also 

 distinguish this coastal plain tributary. 

 Two rare fish, the Cape Fear chub 

 Continued 



COASTWATCH 3 



